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BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 

Constantinople. 8'-o, cloth, $i 5a 

De Amicis is one of the strongest and most brilliant of the pres- 
ent generation of Italian writers, and this latest work from his pen, 
as well from the picturesqueness of its descriptions, as for its skillful 
analysis of the traits and characteristics of the medley of races repre- 
sented in the Turkish capital, possesses an exceptional interest and 
value. 

" The most picturesque and entertaining volume contained in the recent 
literature on the Eastern question." — Boston Journal. 

" A remarkable work * * * the author is a poet, an artist, a wonder- 
worker in words * * * his descriptions are given with rare skill." — N, Y. 
Post. 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. NEW YORK. 



STUDIES OF PARIS 



BIT 



EDMONDO DE AMICIS 



Author of "Constantinople." 



V 



w 



^' 



TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN 



By W. W. CADY 



THIRD EDITION 



NEW YORK 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

27 & 29 W. .23D STREET 

1882 




^Ci 



^1 



Copyright by 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

1879 

^ 12 Ì9U« 



Press 0/ 

G. F, Putnam s Sons 

New York 



FROM THE AUTHOR. 



To Miss Cady, 

Dear Madam : 

I thank you for the kindness with which you judge 
my poor books, and for the honor you do me in trans- 
lating them. You are at Hberty to translate any of those 
which most please you, and to have them printed in 
America, where and by whom you choose. I give you 
the fullest freedom in the use of them, without any re- 
strictions or condition^' '- ' .-.' 

Accept the assurg-nc^ of^ my esteem and sincere 
gratitude. 

Very truly, yours, 

Edmondo de Amicis. 
Piscina-Piedmont, 

i^th June, 1879. 



4^ 



CONTENTS. 



The First Day in Paris ..... i 

A Glance at the Exposition . 37 

Victor Hugo 108 

Emile Zola 178 

Paris ..,.,.... 243 



STUDIES OF PARIS, 



I 

THE FIRST DAY IN PARIS. 

Paris^ 2Zth yunCy 1878. 
Here I am caught once more in this vast gilded net, 
into which one is drawn again and again, whether 
willing or not. The first time I remained here four 
months, thoroughly dissatisfied with myself, and 
glad to make my escape, but now that I return 
somewhat older and more mature and settled, I see 
the fault lay in myself, for woe to him who comes 
to Paris too young, and without any fixed aim in 
view, his head filled with vague notions and his 
pockets empty ! Now I see Paris calmly — in com- 
pany with a dear friend, whose presence aids me in 
feeling more freshly and vividly all my impressions 
of the former visit. 



2 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

Here are those of the first day as they can be 
rendered by a weary brain and a pen borrowed from 
the landlord. 

Before being taken to the Exposition, the reader 
must enter Paris with us. Let us give a glance at 
the theatre before turning to the stage. 

We have arrived at the Lyons station, at eight 
o'clock in the morning, and the weather is most 
beautiful. Here we find ourselves suddenly em- 
barrassed. We had read in the newspapers that the 
cabmen of Paris pushed their presumption to such a 
point, that they were not willing to carry fat peo- 
ple, so I observed to Giacosa that we two were 
made on purpose to provoke and justify a disdainful 
refusal from the most courteous of the cabmen. 
To make matters worse, we both wore dusters which 
added most discouragingly to our size. What were 
we to do ? There was nothing to be done, but try 
and produce a little illusion by approaching the car- 
riage with a mincing step, and summoning the man 
in a falsetto. The experiment was successful. The 
cabman glanced at us anxiously, but let us get into 
the carriage, and then started rapidly for the Boule- 
vards. 



THE FIRST DA V IN PARIS. 3 

We were to go to the Boulevard des Italiens, or 
in other words, to the centre of Paris, passing 
through the most noted of her streets. 

The first impression is an agreeable one. 

It is the large, irregular square of the Bastile, 
noisy and crowded, into which open four Boulevards 
and ten streets, and from which one hears the deaf- 
ening clamor of the immense suburb of St. Antoine. 
But one is still stunned by the noise of the great, 
gloomy station, where we arrived worn out and 
sleepy, and this last Place full of light, these thou- 
sand colors, the grand column of July, the trees, 
the rapid motion of the carriages and the crowd we 
scarcely see. It is the first quick, deep whiff of 
Paris life, and we receive it with half-closed eyes. 
We do not begin to see clearly until we reach the 
Boulevard Beaumarchais. 

Here Paris begins to appear. The wide 
streets, the double row of trees, the cheerful-look- 
ing houses, — everything is neat and fresh, and wears 
a youthful air. One recognizes at the first glance, a 
thousand little refinements of comfort and elegance, 
which reveal a people full of needs and caprices, 
for whom the superfluous is more indispensable than 



4 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

the necessary, and who enjoy life in an ingenu- 
ous sort of way. There is the buvette all resplen- 
dent with show-windows and metals, the little cafe 
full of elegant pretensions, the small eating house 
which boasts the delicious delicacies of the great 
restaurants; and there are a thousand little shops, tidy 
and smiling, which try to outrival each other by 
means of colors, exhibits, inscriptions, puppets and 
little ornaments. Between the two rows of trees is 
a constant passing and repassing of carriages, great 
carts and wagons drawn by engines and high omni- 
buses, lader. with people, bounding up and down on 
the unequal pavement, with a deafening noise. Yet 
the whole air is different from that of London — 
the green open place, the faces, the voices, and the 
colors give to that confusion more the air of pleasure 
than of work. Then too, the population is not 
new, — they are all well-known figures that make 
one smile. There is Gervais who stands at the 
door of the shop with the iron in his hand, and 
Monsieur Joyeuse who goes to the office impro- 
vising an amusement, and Pipilet reading the 
Gazette, Frederick passing under the window of 
Bernerettey the little dressmaker of M urger, the 



THE FIRST DA V TV PARIS. 5 

pin and needle woman of Koch, the Gamin of 
Victor Hugo, the Prudhomme of Monnier, the 
Homme d'affaire of Balzac, and the workingman 
of Zola. Here they are, all of them ! How soon 
we grasp the fact that although thousands of miles 
away, we were living within the immense circuit of 
Paris ! It is half-past eight o'clock, and the great 
day of the great city (a day for Paris^ a month for 
him who arrives) has already begun, as warmly 
and clamorously as a battle. Beyond the tumult of 
streets, one hears confusedly the deep voice of the 
enormous hidden quarters, like the roar of the sea 
concealed by the dykes. One has scarcely issued 
from the Boulevard Beaumarchais, and has not yet 
reached the end of the Boulevard les Filles du 
Calvaire, when one begins to divine, to feel, to 
breathe, I was about to say, the immensity of Paris, 
and one thinks with amazement of those solitary, 
silent little cities, from which we started, called 
Turin, Milan and Florence, where every one stands 
at the shop door, and all seem to live like one great 
family. Yesterday we were rowing on a small lake, 
to-day we are sailing on the ocean. 

After going a little more than a mile, we enter the 



D STUDIES OF PARIS. 

Boulevard du Temple. Here the wide street grows 
broader still, the side ones lengthen, and the houses 
rise higher. The grandeur of Paris begins to ap- 
pear ; and so, as we proceed, everything increases 
in proportion and becomes more impressive. Then 
we begin to see the theatres, the Cirque and Olym- 
pique^ the Lyrique, the Gaìté and the Folies, the 
elegant cafes, the great shops, the fine restaurants, 
and the crowd assumes a more thoroughly Paris- 
ian aspect. The general commotion is noticeably 
greater than at ordinary times. Our carriage is 
obliged to stop every moment to wait until 
the long line which precedes it is in motion. 
The omnibuses, of every shape, which seem like 
perambulating houses, pursue each other madly. 
The people cross each other, running in every direc- 
tion, as if playing ball across the street, and on the 
side walks they pass in two unbroken files. We 
enter the Boulevard St. Martin. It is another step 
forward upon this road of elegance and grandeur. 
The variegated chiosks become thicker, the shops 
more splendid, and the cafes more pretentious. 
The little terraces and balconies of the houses are 
covered with gilded cubital characters, which give 



THE FIRST DA V IN PARIS. 7 

to every fagade the air of the frontispiece of an 
immense book. The theatre fronts, the arches of 
the arcades, the edifices covered with wood-work 
up to the second floors, the restaurants which open 
upon the street in the form of little temples, and 
the theatres gleaming with mirrors, succeed each 
other uninterruptedly, each connected with the 
other like one unending shop. Thousands of orna- 
ments, thousand of nick-nacks, thousands of signs 
conspicuous, capricious and charlatanlike, protrude, 
swing, rise on all sides, and gleam confusedly from 
all heights behind the trees, which extend their 
leafy branches over the chiosks, the seats on the 
sidewalks, the little omnibus-stations, the fountains, 
the tables outside the cafes, the embroidered awn- 
ings of the shops, and the marble steps of the 
theatres. The Boulevard St. Denis succeeds the 
Boulevard St. Martin. The great street descends, 
rises, narrows, receives from the large arteries of 
the populous neighboring quarters crowds of horses 
and people ; and extends before us as far as the eye 
can reach, swarming with carriages and black with 
the crowd, divided into three parts by the enormous 
garlands of verdure, which fill it with shade and 



8 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

freshness. For three quarters of an hour we have 
been going step by step, winding in and out and just 
clearing interminable lines of carriages, which pre- 
sent the appearance of a fabulous nuptial cortege 
extending from one end of Paris to the other. We 
enter the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, and the bustle, 
hum and noise increase, as does the grandeur of the 
great shops which line the street with their enor- 
mous show windows, the ostentation of the Re- 
clame {i. e., signs, advertisements) which climb up 
from the first floors to the second, to the third, to 
the cornices, and so to the roofs ; the windows be- 
come rooms, the precious merchandise is piled up, 
the many colored placards are multiplied, the walls 
of the houses disappear under the gleaming decora- 
tions, childish and magnificent, which attract and 
weary the eye. It is not a street through which we 
are passing, but rather a succession of squares. A 
single, immense square decked for a féte, and over- 
flowed by a multitude gleaming in quicksilver. 
Everything is open, transparent and placed in view 
as at an elegant, great market in the open air. 
The eye penetrates to the last recesses of the rich 
shops, to the distant counters of the long, white 



THE FIRST DA V IN PARIS. 9 

and gilded cafes, and into the high rooms of the 
princely restaurants, embracing at every slight 
change of direction a thousand beauties, a thousand 
surprises, a thousand striking minutiae, an infinite 
variety of treasures, dainties, playthings, works of 
art, ruinous trifles and temptations of every kind, 
from which one can only escape to fall into a like 
snare on the other side of the street, or by amusing 
one's self along the two endless rows of chiosks 
painted with all the colors of a harlequin, and hung 
with newspapers of every country and form, which 
give to the great Boulevard the appearance, both 
strange and attractive, of a great literary fair at 
carnival. Meanwhile we enter the Boulevard Poisson- 
ière from the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle and the 
spectacle grows more varied, extended and richer. 
We have already traversed the length of four thou- 
sand metres ; experiencing more and more anew and 
lively feeling, which is not only of marvel, but a 
confused discontent, a regret full of desires, the 
bitterness of the youth who feels himself humiliated 
at his first entrance into the world, a species of de 
lusion of amour propre^ which is expressed in pitiful 
and irrascible glances at the poverty of his baggage 



IO STUDIES OF PARIS. 

(exposed to ridicule on the box of the carriage) in 
the midst of this insolent luxury. 

At last, we enter the Boulevard Mont-Martre, 
which is followed by those of the Italiens, Capucins 
and Madeleine. Ah ! Here is the burning heart of 
Paris, the high road to mundane triumphs, the great 
theatre of the ambitions and of the famous disso- 
lutenesses, which draws to itself the gold, vice and 
folly of the four quarters of the globe. 

Here is splendor at its height ; this is the metrop- 
olis of metropolises, the open and lasting palace of 
Paris, to which all aspire and everything tends. 
Here the street becomes a square, the sidewalk 
a street, the shop a museum, the cafe a theatre, 
beauty elegance, splendor dazzling magnificence, 
and life a fever. The horses pass in troops, and 
the crowd in torrents. Windows, signs, advertise- 
ments, doors, fagades, all rise, widen and become sil- 
vered, gilded and illumined. It is a rivalry of magnif- 
icence and stateliness which borders on madness. 
There is the cleanliness of Holland and the gayety 
of color belonging to an oriental bazaar. It seems 
like one immeasurable hall of an enormous museum, 
where the gold, gems, laces, flowers, crystals, bronzes, 



THE FIRST DA V IN PARIS. 1 1 

pictures, all the masterpieces of industry, all the 
seductions of art, all the finery of riches, and all the 
caprices of fashion are crowded together and dis- 
played in a profusion which startles, and a grace 
which enamors. The gigantic panes of glass, the 
innumerable mirrors, the bright trimmings of wood 
which extend half way up the edifices, reflect every- 
thing. Great inscriptions in gold run along the 
facades like the verses from the Koran along the 
walls of the mosques. The eye finds no space upon 
which to rest. On every side gleam names illus- 
trious in the kingdom of fashion and pleasure, the 
titles of the restaurants of princes and Croesuses; 
and the shops, whose doors one opens with a trem- 
bling hand^ — everywhere an aristocratic luxury, pro- 
voking and bold, which says. Spend — Pour out — 
and Enjoy, and at the same time excites and chafes 
the desires. Here there is no substantial beauty; 
it is a species of theatrical and effeminate magnifi- 
cence, a grandeur of ornamentation, excessive and 
full of coquetry and pride, which dazzles and con- 
fuses like blinding scintillations, and expresses to 
perfection the nature of a great, opulent and sensual 
city, living only for pleasure and glory. Here 



12 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

one feels a certain constraint. It does not seem 
like passing through a public place, so great is the 
cleanliness and grandeur. The crowd itself moves 
there with a certain staid grace, as if in a great hall, 
gliding over the asphalt without noise, as over a 
carpet. The shopkeepers stand behind colossal 
show windows with the dignity of grands seigneurs, 
as if only expecting millionaire purchasers. Even 
the vendors of newspapers in the chiosks here as- 
sume a certain literary air. It seems as if all were 
conscious of the superiority of the location, and 
strove to add in their own persons a well toned 
stroke of the brush to the great picture of the 
Boulevards. One can in fact collect with the 
thoughts all the scattered pictures which are to be 
found in our most flourishing cities; but no one, 
who has never seen it, will ever be able to represent 
the spectacle of that living stream which flows with- 
out rest between those two interminable walls of glass, 
amid that verdure and that gold, beside that noisy 
tumult of horses and wheels, and in that wide street 
whose end one cannot see ; nor form a just idea of 
the figure, which the miserable valises belonging to 
us poor literati made in its midst. 



THE FIRST DA V IN PARIS. 1 3 

We had scarcely taken breath at the hotel, when 
we returned to the Boulevards, before the Cafe 
Riche, attracted thither like moths to the light 
without being fairly aware of it. Strange ! It 
seemed to me as if I had been in Paris for a week. 
The crowd, however, wears quite a different aspect 
from that of ordinary times. Foreign faces, travel- 
ling costumes, provincial families, weary and sur- 
prised, mingle with the dark faces of the South, 
and the blonde beards and hair of the North. On 
the bridge at Constantinople one sees all the East 
pass by, here, all the West. The usual petticoats are 
lost in that abyss. Now and then one sees a Japan- 
ese face, a negro, a turban, an Oriental garb, but 
these soon disappear in the black flood of the crowd 
in high hats. I notice many members of that innu- 
merable family of great men who have failed, whom 
all recognize at the first glance ; strange figures with 
exhausted faces and eye-glasses, dressed in black, 
very greasy, carrying old useless writings under 
their arms. Dreamers of all countries come to Paris 
to tempt the wheel of Fortune with a mechanical 
invention or a literary masterpiece. This is the 
great torrent that swallows up mediocre excellence — 



14 STUDIES OF PARIS, 

provincial " celebrities," and national " illustra- 
tions," great personages in gold lace, etc. Princes 
and rich men, ten for a graziai {i. e. seven centimes.) 
One sees neither proud faces, nor sa^sfied vanity. 
They are all indistinct drops in an inexhaustible 
wave, upon which only giants can ride — and one 
understands from what formidable springs, the am- 
bition of glory to rise above this Pandemonium, 
must receive its impulse, and with what raging 
obstinacy brains are racked to find words and cries 
to make the hundred thousand heads of this mar- 
vellous throng turn around ! One experiences a 
sensation of pleasure in being there on that pave- 
ment scattered with crushed ambitions and dead 
glories, upon which rise other ambitions, and other 
forces try their strength without rest. One enjoys 
being there as if in the midst of a gigantic workshop, 
vibrating and noisy, to feel one's self joined, even for 
a little while, as a living molecule, to that great body 
around which everything gravitates, to breathe a 
mouthful of air upon that Tower of Babel, taking 
part from a round of the interminable ladder in 
the immense work, and comforted by the thought 
that one can get away from it all in fifteen days. 



THE FIRST DA V IN PARIS. 1 5 

Then let us take a two hours' drive, describing an 
immense zig-zag on the right bank of the Seine, in 
order to see Hfe circulating in the minor arteries of 
Paris. I see again with intense pleasure that verdant 
and splendid Boulevard, Sebastopol and Strasbourg, 
which seems made for the triumphal passage of an 
army, and that endless Rue Lafayette, in which the 
two black streams formed by the crowd are lost to 
view in the dim distance, where it seems as if an- 
other metropolis commenced. I pass once more 
through those immense openings called Boulevard 
Haussmann, Boulevard Malesherbes, Boulevard 
Magenta, and Boulevard Prince Eugene, into 
which one glances with a shudder, as into an 
abyss, while seizing one's companion by the arm. 
Let us go to the Rond Point de I'Etoile, to see 
flying in all directions, like the spokes of an im- 
mense wheel, the main streets which divide into 
fourteen gay, triangular quarters, the tenth part of 
Paris. Then return to the heart of the city, traverse 
that inextricable net of small crooked streets, full 
of noise and crowded with memories whose sudden, 
malicious turnings prepare the great unexpected 
views of the cross-roads full of light, and of the 



l6 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

noted streets closed at the end by a magnificent 
pile, which rises above the city like a mountain of 
chiselled granite. Everywhere there is a flying 
about of carriages laden with luggage, and sleepy, 
dusty faces of the new arrivals, who look out of the 
windows as if to ask the reason of this chaos. Near 
the stations there are files of travellers on foot 
who follow each other, valises in hand, as if one had 
robbed the other. There is not one moment's 
repose, either for the ear, for the eye, or the brain. 
You hope, perhaps, to be able to drink your beer in 
peace before an almost empty cafe. Vain illusion ! 
The Reclame pursues you. The first passer by 
puts into your hand a lyric which commences with 
an invective against the " International Exhibition," 
and ends by inviting you to purchase an overcoat at 
Monsieur Armangans, Coupeur Emèrite. A moment 
after, you find yourself in possession of a sonnet 
which promises you a ticket to the Exhibition if 
you will go and order a pair of shoes in Rue Rouge- 
mont. In order to free yourself from this you raise 
your eyes. Oh, Heavens ! A gilded advertising 
carriage is passing with servants in livery, which 
offers you high hats at a reduction. Look at the 



THE FIRST DA Y IN PARIS. I / 

end of the street. What ! Half a mile away there 
is an advertisement in titanic characters of the 
Petit Journal — " Six thousand copies daily — 
three million readers ! " which affects you like a 
shriek in your ear. You raise your eyes to Heaven, 
but, unfortunately, there is no freedom even in 
Heaven. Above the highest roof of the quarter, 
is traced in delicate characters against the blue of 
the sky the name of a cloudland artist who wishes 
to take your photograph — so of course there is 
nothing left to do, but fasten your eyes upon the 
table ! No — not even that ! The table is divided 
into so many colored and painted squares, which 
offer you dyes and pomades — you turn your face 
angrily around — oh, unfortunate man. The back 
of the chair recommends to you a glovemaker. 
So there is no other refuge from these persecu- 
tions except to look at your feet, but alas, there is 
no refuge here even, for you see stamped upon the 
asphalt by a stencil plate an advertisement which 
begs you to dine on home-cooking in Rue Chaussée 
d'Antin. In walking for half an hour you read, 
without wishing to do so, half a volume. The whole 
city, in fact, is an inexhaustible, graphic, variegated 



1 8 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

and enormous decoration, aided by grotesque pic- 
tures of devils and puppets high as houses, which 
assail and oppress you, making you curse the alpha- 
bet. That Petit Journal, for example, covers half 
of Paris. You must either kill it or buy it. Every- 
thing that is put into your hand, from the boat- 
ticket to the coupon for the chair, upon which you 
rest your weary bones in the public gardens, 
conceal the snare of advertisement. Even the walls 
of the small temples, which you only enter by force, 
talk of, offer and recommend something. In every 
corner there are a thousand mouths which call 
you, and a thousand hands which beckon. It is a 
net that encircles Paris. You can spend your last 
centime, believing all the time that you are very 
economical. Yet how many varieties of objects and 
sights ! In the space of fifteen steps you see a 
crown of diamonds, an enormous bunch of camelias, 
a pile of live turtles, an oil painting, a couple of au- 
tomatic young women, who are swimming in a lake 
of tin, a complete suit of clothes to content a man, 
** most scrupulously elegant," for eight francs and 
fifty centimes, a number of the Journal des AbrutiSy 
with an important article on the exhibitions of cows, 



THE FIRST DA Y IN PARIS. 1 9 

a cabinet for experiments of the phonograph, and a 
shopkeeper who is flying feathered butterflies to 
attract the children who are passing by. At every 
step you see all the illustrious faces of France. 
There is no city which equals Paris in this kind 
of exposition. Hugo, Augier, Mile. Judic, Littré, 
Coquelin, Dufaure and Daudet are in all the nooks. 
No impression, not even the places, is really new. 
One never sees Paris for the first time, but always 
sees it again. It does not recall any Italian city, yet 
does not appear strange, so many reminiscenses of 
our intellectual life do we find there again. A friend 
says to you, " Here is Sardou's house ; this is Gam. 
betta's palace ; here are Dumas' windows ; here the 
office of Figaro^ and you reply most naturally, *' Oh, 
I knew that." Thus, recognizing thousands of ob- 
jects and aspects, we continue to move rapidly 
among the many carriages, through a dense crowd 
which stops us suddenly, under the delicious shade 
of Monceau Park, around the great, light arches 
of the halles, before the immense Magasin de Nou- 
veautés^ hedged in by carriages; .half seeing in the 
distance, now one side of the Opera, now a col- 
onnade of the Bourse, now the roof of a railway 



20 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

Station, now a palace burned by the commune, now 
a gilded cupola of the Invalides, saying to one 
another a thousand things, and the same things, 
with the greatest enthusiasm, yet without uttering 
one word, or exchanging a glance. 

I had heard it said that a stranger in Paris is 
hardly aware of the fact that there is an Exposition. 
That is nonsense, for everything leads the thoughts 
to the Exposition. One sees the towers of the 
Trocadero in effigy on every side, as if thousands 
of mirrors reflected them, and the picture of the 
Champs de Mars is presented to you in innumerable 
ways, under as many forms. All the population 
seem to agree, and do agree to make the féte suc- 
cessful. There is a universal refinement of courtesy, 
every one does his part. Even the smallest shop- 
keeper feels the dignity of a host. You read in the 
face of every Parisian the satisfaction of being a 
stockholder of the theatre in which this great spec- 
tacle is being offered to the world, and the con- 
sciousness of being an object of admiration, which 
serves greatly toward making him one. The great 
city smiles blandly, and is eager to please all. It 
has provided in fact, in a thousand ways, at every 



THE FIRST DA Y IN PARIS. 2 I 

step and at every price, for every conceivable desire 
and caprice. There is a fever for this '' Industrial 
Fair." Labor, peace, fraternity and grand fraternal 
hospitality resound on all sides. Perhaps, in fact it 
is certain, that there is hidden under this another 
feeling, that of amour propre, wounded in another 
field, which seizes the present glory, in order to 
compensate it for the past ; and exalts with all its 
force the supremacy which remains, to throw ob- 
scurity upon that, most dear to the heart perhaps, 
which it has lost. Yet none the less extraordinary 
is the sight of this city (which one day seemed to 
have sunk entirely under the maledictions of God), / 
after seven years, so grand, superb and proud, so 
full of blood, gold and glory, and one experiences 
an unexpected sensation on arriving here. You 
started for the Exposition, that was your aim, 
and the first object in view. You have scarcely 
arrived before it becomes the last. Paris, which 
made it, kills it. You think that down yonder, at 
the end of the great city, is an immense shoddy 
palace, containing many beautiful things, but you 
regard it almost with disdain, as if it were some 
importunate person, who wished to contend with 



22 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

and disturb your enjoyment of Paris. The first day 
the picture of the Towers of the Trocadero was 
odious to me. So at the Champs de Mars, standing 
in ecstasies before a pretty EngHsh girl who is work- 
ing, you hardly deign to give one glance at the in- 
genious machine which gleams under her hands. 

At last we reach the Seine. What a full, deep 
breath we draw! How beautiful always is this great 
blue stream which flows, reflecting the gay colors of 
its thousand floating houses, between the two high 
banks crowned with colossi of stone ! Before and 
behind us the long bridges mingle their arches of 
every form, and the black streaks formed by the 
crowd which swarms behind its parapets ; beneath, 
the boats filled with people follow each other ; 
crowds of human beings continually descend the 
terraces of the banks, and quarrel at the steps ; and 
the confused voices of the multitude mingle with 
the songs of women crowded in the wash houses, 
with the sound of the horns and bells, the noise of 
the carriages on the quays, the lament of the river 
and murmur of the trees on the bank, stirred by a 
light breeze, which makes one feel the freshness of 
the country and the sea. The Seine too labors for 



THE FIRST DA Y IN PARIS, 23 

the '* Great Festival of Peace," and it seems as if 
it spread out more benevolently than usual (between 
the two Parises which look at it) its regal and ma- 
ternal grandeur. 

At this point, my companion could no longer 
resist the temptations of Notre Dame, and we 
climbed to the top of the two towers to see " the 
monster." A great thing is that for calming the 
mind. We must at least look down upon this mon- 
strous city — in the only way which is possible — 
with our eyes. So we climbed on to the point of 
the roof of the left tower, where Quasimodo stood 
astride of the bell, and seized the staff — what a glo- 
rious immensity ! Paris fills the horizon and seems 
as if it would cover all the world with the gray, 
immovable, measureless waves of its roofs and 
walls. The sky was not clear. The clouds threw 
here and there dark shadows which covered spaces 
large as Rome ; and in other parts appeared like 
mountains, great galleries and immense promonto- 
ries gilded by the sun. The Seine glistened like a 
silver scarf from one end of Paris to the other, 
striped by its thirty bridges, which seemed like 
threads stretched between the banks, and scarcely 



24 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

dotted by the hundred boats, that looked like floating 
leaves. Beneath, the delicate and sad pile, the 
Cathedral, the two islands — squares black with ants, 
the skeleton of the future Hotel de Ville, resem- 
bling a great bird cage, and the advertisement, 
(immeasurable and insolent,) of a clothes merchant, 
which met the eye at the distance of one thousand 
two hundred metres. Here and there great spots 
that were cemeteries, gardens and parks, and resem- 
bled green islands in that ocean. Away in the dis- 
tance, on the horizon, across light violet mists, lay 
uncertain outlines of smoking suburbs, behind 
which, nothing being visible, we still fancied Paris. 
On another side, other enormous suburbs, crowded 
upon heights like armies ready to descend, full 
of sadness and menace. In the valley of the Seine, 
with a clearness, slightly indistinct, as if enveloped 
in an enormous and luminous cloud of dust, the 
colossal and transparent architecture of the Champs 
de Mars. What dizzy flights of the eye from Belle- 
ville to Ivry, from the Bois de Boulogne to Pan- 
tin, from Courbevoie to the Forest of Vincennes, 
springing from cupola to cupola, tower to tower, 
from colossus to colossus, from memory to memory, 



THE FIRST DA Y IN PARIS. 2$ 

and century to century, accompanied as if with 
music, by the long, deep inhalation of Paris. Poor 
and dear nest of my little family, where are you ? 
Then my friend said to me — " Come, let us go 
down into the Inferno ! " — and we turned to dive 
into the obscurity of an interminable winding stair- 
case, when an unexpected stroke of the great bell 
of Louis XIV made us tremble, like the discharge 
of a cannon. 

So we returned to the Boulevards. It was the 
dinner hour. At that time the commotion is simply 
indescribable. Carriages pass six in a row, fifty in 
a line, in great groups, or thick masses, which scatter 
here and there in the direction of the side streets, 
and it seems as if they issued from each other, like 
rays of light, making a dull, monotonous sound, re- 
sembling that of an enormous, unending railway 
train which is passing by. Then all the gay life of 
Paris pours itself out there from all the neighboring 
streets, the galleries and the squares. The hundred 
omnibuses of the Trocadero arrive and unload, the 
carriages and the crowd on foot which is coming 
from the steps of the Seine, masses of people who 
cross the streets at the risk of their lives, step on to 



20 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

the sidewalk, assail the chiosks, from which myriads 
of newspapers are hanging, dispute the seats before 
the cafes and bubble up at the opening of the 
streets. The first lamps are being lighted, and the 
great banquet begins. From every side come the 
sound and glisten of the glasses and knives and 
forks on the white table-cloths spread in the sight 
of all. Delicious odors steal from the grand restaur- 
ants, the windows of whose upper story are being 
lighted, showing fragments of gleaming rooms and 
the shadows of women gliding backward and for- 
ward behind the lace curtains. A warm, soft air, 
like that of a theatre filled with the perfume of 
Havana cigars, and the penetrating odor of absinthe, 
which gives a greenish hue to ten thousand glasses, 
with the fragrance coming from the flower stalls, 
with musk, perfumed clothes and feminine coiffures ; 
an odor belonging entirely to the Boulevards of 
Paris, its boudoirs and hotels, which always affects 
the head. The carriages stop ; the cocottes, with 
their long trains descend from them, and disappear 
with the rapidity of arrows through the doors of 
the restaurants. Among the crowd at the cafes re- 
sounds the silvery and forced laughter of those 



THE FIRST DA Y IN PARIS. 2J 

seated in little circles. The " couples" break au- 
daciously through the crowd. The people begin to 
form themselves into double lines at the doors of 
the theatres, and circulation is interrupted at every 
moment. You are obliged to walk zigzag, taking 
short steps and gently forcing your way with your 
elbows through the forest of high hats, opera hats, 
black overcoats, dress suits, open waistcoats and 
embroidered shirt bosoms, taking care to avoid 
treading on little feet and trains, in the midst of a 
low, confused and hurried murmur, upon which is 
echoed the sound of flying corks, and in a fine cloud 
of dust arising from that terrible asphalt. It is no 
longer a mere coming and going of people, but a 
sort of whirlpool, or surging mass, as if an im- 
mense furnace were burning under the street. It is 
an idleness which seems a labor, a wearisome fete, 
as if people were fearful that they should be too 
late to take their places at the great banquet. The 
vast space is no longer sufficient for the black, ner- 
vous, elegant, sensual and perfumed multitude so 
full of gold and all kinds of appetites, which seeks 
pleasures for all the senses. From moment to mo- 
ment the spectacle becomes more exciting. The 



28 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

rushing of the carriages resembles the disordered 
flight of a retreating army ; the cafes sound like work- 
shops ; under the shadow of the trees sweet collo- 
quies are being held, and every thing moves and 
trembles in that half darkness, not yet conquered 
by the nocturnal illumination. An indescribable 
voluptuousness permeates the air, while the night 
of Paris, laden with follies and sins, prepares its 
enticing snares. This is the moment in which the 
great city takes possession of and conquers you, 
even if you be the most austere man on earth. It 
is the Lenocmio Gallico of Gioberti. It is an invisi- 
ble hand which caresses you, a sweet voice whisper- 
ing in your ear, a spark that runs through your 
veins, and an impetuous desire to dive into that 
vortex and be drowned, which having passed away, 
you can go somewhere and dine delightfully for two 
francs and fifty centimes. 

The dinner, too, is a spectacle, for which you find 
yourself involuntarily (like us) in an immense res- 
taurant, brilliant as a theatre, which consists of one 
large hall, encircled by a broad gallery, where five 
hundred persons, making the noise of a good-natured 
assembly, can be fed at once, — after which comes 



THE FIRST DA V IN PARIS. 29 

the last scene of the marvellous representation 
commenced at eight o'clock in the morning in the 
Square of the Bastile, namely — the night of Paris. 
Let us return to the heart of the city. Here it 
seems as if day were beginning again. It is not an 
illumination, but a fire. The Boulevards are blazing. 
Half closing the eyes it seems if one saw on the right 
and left two rows of flaming furnaces. The shops cast 
floods of brilliant light half across the street, and 
encircle the crowd in a golden dust. Diffused rays 
and beams, which make the gilded letters and bril- 
liant trimmings of the facades shine as if of phos- 
phorus, pour down on every side. The chiosks, 
which extend in two interminable rows, lighted from 
within, with their many colored panes, resembling 
enormous Chinese lanterns placed on the ground, or 
the little transparent theatres of the Marionettes, 
give to the street the fantastic and childlike aspect 
of an Oriental féte. The numberless reflections of 
the glasses, the thousand luminous points shining 
through the branches of the trees, the inscriptions 
in gas gleaming on the theatre fronts, the rapid 
motion of the innumerable carriage lights, that seem 
like myriads of fireflies set in motion by the wind, 



30 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

the purple lamps of the omnibuses, the great flaming 
halls opening into the street, the shops which re- 
semble caves of incandescent gold and silver, the 
hundred thousand illuminated windows, the trees 
that seem to be lighted, all these theatrical splen- 
dors, half-concealed by the verdure, which now and 
then allows one to see the distant illuminations, and 
presents the spectacle in successive scenes, — all this 
broken light, refracted, variegated, and mobile, fall- 
ing in showers, gathered in torrents, and scattered 
in stars and diamonds, produces the first time an 
impression of which no idea can possibly be given. 
It seems like an immense display of fireworks, 
which suddenly being extinguished, will leave the 
city buried in smoke. There is not a shadow on the 
sidewalks, where one could find a pin. Every face 
is illuminated. You discover your own image re- 
flected on every side. You can see everything, the 
interior of the cafes, even to the last mirrors, glis- 
tening with the diamonds of the fair sinners. The 
fair sex, which during the day seemed to be dis- 
persed and hidden, abounds in the crowd. Before 
every cafe there is the parquette of a theatre, of 
which the Boulevard is the stage. Every face is 



THE FIRST DA V IN PARIS. 3 1 

turned toward the street, and it is a curious fact 
that aside from the rumbling of the carriages, no 
loud noise is to be heard. You look a great deal, 
but you say little, and that in a low voice, as if out 
of respect for the place, or because the great light 
imposes a certain reserve. You walk on, always in 
the midst of a fire, amid an immovable and seated 
crowd, so that it seems as if you were passing from 
saloon to saloon in an immense open palace, or 
through a suite of enormous Spanish Patios, amid 
the splendors of a ball, among a million guests, 
without knowing when you will arrive at the exit, if 
there be one. 

So, step by step, you reach the Place de l'Opera. 

It is here that Paris makes one of its grandest 
impressions. You have before you the fagade of 
the Theatre, enormous and bold, resplendant with 
colossal lamps between the elegant columns, before 
which open Rue Auber and Rue Halévy ; to the 
right, the great furnace of the Boulevard des Ital- 
iens ; to the left, the flaming Boulevard des Capu- 
cines, which stretches out between the two burning 
walls of the Boulevard Madeleine, and turning 
around, you see three great diverging streets which 



32 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

dazzle you like so many luminous abysses : Rue de la 
Paix, all gleaming with gold and jewels, at the end 
of which the black Colonne Vendóme rises against 
the starry sky ; the Avenue de l'Opera inundated 
with electric light ; Rue Quatre Septembre shining 
with its thousand gas jets ; and seven continuous 
lines of carriages issuing from the two Boulevards 
and five streets, crossing each other rapidly on the 
square, and a crowd coming and going under a 
shower of rosy and whitest light diffused from the 
great ground-glass globes, which produce the effect 
of wreaths and garlands of full moons, coloring the 
trees, high buildings and the multitude with the 
weird and mysterious reflections of the final scene 
of a fancy ballet. Here one experiences for the 
moment the sensations produced by Hasheesh. 
That mass of gleaming streets which lead to the 
Theatre Fran^ais, to the TuilerieSj to the Concorde 
and Champs Elysées, each one of which brings you a 
voice of the great Paris festival, calling and attract- 
ing you on seven sides, like the stately entrances of 
seven enchanted palaces, and kindling in your brain 
and veins the madness of pleasure. You would like 
to see everything and be everywhere at one time, to 



THE FIRST DA V IN PARIS. 33 

hear from the mouth of the great Got the sublime 
Efface of Les Fourchambaults, to froHc at the 
Mabille, to swim in the Seine, and to sup at the 
Maison Dorée ; — you would like to fly from thea- 
tre to theatre, ball to ball, garden to garden, and 
splendor to splendor, dispensing gold, champagne 
and bons mots — and in fact live ten years in one 
night. 

Yet this is not the greatest spectacle of the night. 
You go on as far as the Madeleine^ turn into Rue 
Royale, emerge on the Place de la Concorde, and 
there give vent to the loudest and most joyous ex- 
clamation of surprise which Paris can draw from the 
lips of a stranger. There certainly is no other square 
in any European city where beauty, light, art and 
nature aid each other so marvellously by forming a 
spectacle which entrances the imagination. At the 
first glance you are unable to grasp anything, either 
the boundaries of the square, the distance, where 
you are or what you see. It is an immense open-air 
theatre, in the midst of an enormous flaming garden, 
which reminds one of the illuminated encampment 
of an army of three hundred thousand men ; but 
when you have reached the centre of the square, are 



34 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

standing at the foot of the obelisk of Sesostris, be- 
tween the two monumental fountains, and see, on 
the right, between two great Gabriel columned build- 
ings, the superb Rue Royale, shut in at the end by 
the magnificent fagade of the Madeline ; on the left, 
the Pont de la Concorde, opening opposite the pal- 
ace of the Corps Législatif, whitened by a flood of 
electric light ; on the other side, the great dark spot, 
the Imperial gardens, enwreathed in light, at the 
end of which are the ruins of the Tuileries^ and in 
the opposite direction, the majestic avenue of the 
Champs Elysées, terminated by the high Arc de 
rEtoile, dotted with fire from the lanterns of ten 
thousand carriages and cabs, and lined with two 
groves scattered with gleaming cafes and theatres ; 
where you embrace with one glance the illuminated 
banks of the Seine, the gardens, monuments, and 
the immense and scattered crowd coming from the 
bridges, boulevards, groves, quays, theatres, and 
swarming confusedly from every side of the square ; 
in that strange light, among the jets and cascades 
of silvery water, amid the statues, gigantic candel- 
abra, pillars and verdure, in the limpid and fragrant 
air of a beautiful summer night, then you feel all the 



J 



THE FIRST DA Y IN PARIS. 35 

beauty of that spot, unrivalled in all the world, and 
you cannot refrain from crying, Oh, Paris ! Cursed 
and dear Paris ! Bold syren, is it indeed true that one 
must flee thee like a fury, or adore thee like a God- 
dess ? From thence we went as far as the garden of 
the Champs Elysées, to wander among the open-air 
theatres, chiosks, alcazars, circuses and concert halls, 
through interminable and crowded avenues, from 
which we could hear the noisy sounds of the orches- 
tras, applause and laughter of those immense tip- 
pling parquettes, and the falsetto voices of the 
canzonette singers, whose luxurious nudity and 
gypsy dresses we could see through the foliage, 
in the midst of the splendor of those stages framed 
by plants. We wished to go to the very end, but 
the farther we advanced, the more that nocturnal 
bacchanal lengthened out and enlarged ; from behind 
every group of trees sprang a new theatre and 
luminary, at every turn of the avenue we found 
ourselves in face of a new revelry ; then too, on the 
other hand, my good friend Giacosa had been beg- 
ging for mercy for some time, in a most lamentable 
tone of voice, telling me that his eyes were fast 
closing, and he could no longer keep his head from 



36 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

drooping on his shoulders. So we returned to the 
Place de la Concorde, stopped a moment to contem- 
plate that marvellous Rue de Rivoli, lighted for the 
length of ten miles like a ball room, and entered at 
midnight the Boulevards, still resplendent, crowded, 
noisy and gay as at the beginning of the evening, 
just as if the busy day of Paris were commencing 
then ; as if the great city had banished sleep for- 
ever, and were condemned by God to the torture 
of an everlasting festival. From thence we trans- 
ported our remains to the hotel. 

This is the way we passed our first day at Paris. 



II. 

A GLANCE AT THE EXPOSITION. 

The first time I entered the enclosure of the Ex- 
position on the Trocadero side, I stopped for some 
moments at the Pont de Jena, in order to seek a 
simile, which would best render to my future readers 
a faithful idea of the spectacle, and it occurred to 
me to compare the sensation one experiences 
in entering, to that which one would have in ar- 
riving at a great square, in which the orchestras 
of the Noiivel-Opéra and Opéra-Comique are play- 
ing on one side, the bands of ten regiments on 
the other, and all the musical instruments of the 
earth (from the new piano-forte with a double key- 
board, to the horn and drum of the savages, accom- 
panied in a falsetto by the thousand soprani of the 
Cafe Chantant, the noise of a hail storm of petards 
and the booming of cannon) in the middle. This 



38 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

is not an anthoiogical simile, but it gives an idea of 
the thing. 

In fact, upon reaching the Pont de Jena, you feel 
obliged to close your eyes for some minutes, as upon 
arriving in that square you would have to stop your 
ears. 

You are astonished, provoked, confused and ex- 
cited at the same time, undecided betwixt applause 
and a shrug of the shoulders, between admiration 
and disappointment ; in one of those uncertain 
states, in which generally, after meditating for some 
time, you light a cigar. 

Picture to yourself, on one side, upon an emi- 
nence, that enormous architectural braggart, the 
palace of the Trocadero, with a cupola higher than 
that of St. Peters, flanked by two towers which look 
like campanili^ minarets and light-houses ; that 
horrid centre building and those two large, graceful 
wings, with their hundred Greek pillars, Moorish 
pavilions and Byzantine arches ; painted and deco- 
rated like an Indian palace, from which falls a tor- 
rent of water in the midst of a group of . gilded 
statuettes — the arch of an immense amphitheatre 
that crowns the horizon, and crushes all the sur» 



A GLANCE AT THE EXPOSITION. 39 

rounding heights. On the opposite side, at a great 
distance, imagine that other enormous edifice of 
glass and iron, painted, gilded, beflagged, decorated 
with coats of arms, and gleaming, with its three 
great transparent pavilions, its colossal statues, 
and its sixty doors, as majestic in appearance as a 
temple, and light as the immense tent of a roving 
people. Between these two theatrical edifices, 
fancy once more that great river and bridge ; and 
on the right and left an indescribable labyrinth of 
gardens, rocks, lakes, ascents, descents, grottos, 
aquariums, fountains, steps and avenues lined with 
statues. A minature world ; a plain and a height 
upon which every nation of the earth has deposited 
its plaything ; an international caravansary peopled 
by African and Asiatic shops and cafes, villas and 
workshops, in the midst of which a little barbarous 
city raises its white minarets and green cupolas ; the 
Chinese roofs, Siamese chiosks, the Persian terraces, 
the bazaars of Egypt and Morocco; and innumerable 
buildings of stone, marble, wood, glass and iron of 
all countries, forms and colors, rise one beside the 
other, looking like the model of a cosmopolitan 
city, built for an experiment, inside a great botani- 



40 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

cai garden, in order to be reconstructed later on a 
grander scale. Picture to yourself this spectacle 
and the strange population of vendors and custo- 
dians that animates it. All those ambiguous faces 
of a swarthy hue, Parisianized Arabs, that re-dyed 
Orient, phantomlike Africa, Asia in minature, all 
that cleansed and varnished barbarity placed in the 
show window with a little red ribbon around its 
neck ; and that inexhaustible black crowd of curious 
people, who wander slowly around with a heavy 
gait and languid eyes, looking on every side, with- 
out knowing where to stop. Well ? What is to be 
said about it ? There is nothing lacking but the 
little theatre of Guignol. It is a great Brock, much 
more beautiful without any doubt, and more varied 
than that of Holland. It is so good that one is 
tempted to ask whether it is for sale before 1879 
scatters everything far and wide with a great explo- 
sion. A spectacle unique in all the world, really 
beautiful, immense and hideous, which is fascin- 
ating. 

One's first distinct sense of admiration is felt on 
going into the vestibule of the palace of the Champs 
de Mars. It seems like entering the enormous nave 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 4 1 

of a cathedral gleaming with gold and inundated 
with light. It is a third longer than the largest 
nave of St. Peter's, and the Arc de I'Etoile could 
take shelter under the roof of its pavilions without 
coming in contact with them. Here you begin 
to hear the deep hum of the crowd within, which 
resembles that of a city on a féte day. The people 
gather around the equestrian statue of Charles the 
Great, before the classic temple of Sevres China, at 
the foot of the high trophy of Canada, which rises 
at the end of the vestibule like an ancient tower of 
assault, and a double procession ascends and de- 
scends the steps of that queer Indian palace, upheld 
by a hundred little pillars and crowned by ten 
cupolas, into which one must enter in order to 
ascertain that it is not the nest of little Hindostan 
princesses to be carried off. A group of curious 
people stand fascinated around the case of the royal 
diamonds of England, among which their gleams on 
a diadem the famous Kandevassy^ valued at three 
million francs, dazzling and perfidious like the fixed 
and fascinating eye of a syren, which at the same 
moment pricks you to the heart and ruins your 
soul ; but everything is obscured by the fabulous 



42 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

treasures of India, by that suit of armor, the gob- 
lets, vases, saddles, carpets and narghiles gleaming 
with silver, gold and gems ; and makes one think of 
the riches of one of those insensate queens of Ara- 
bian legends, so full of caprices and so inexorable, 
which weary the omnipotent banquets of the Genii. 
Really, when you think that they are all the spon- 
taneous gifts of princes and people, you believe it 
without doubt ; but you look around involuntarily, 
with the vague idea that you will find at the foot of 
the equestrian statue of the Prince of Wales all the 
donors stripped and bound, and you think too, 
sometimes, whether in all that space in the vestibule 
between the Indian palace and the statue of the 
prince, piling them well from the floor to the ceil- 
ing, and not leaving the smallest space, half the 
skeletons of those dead from hunger in the Indies 
during the famine, would find place. 

After giving a glance at the Vestibule, I hastened 
with intense curiosity to the inner door which opens 
on the Street of the Nations. 

Yes, it is rather theatrical, but it is beautiful ; a 
lovely trick arranged ingeniously by twenty nations ; 
half a world seen in miniature ; the street of a great 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION, 43 

metropolis which is to come in a time of universal 
fraternity, when countries shall have disappeared. 
At the first glance, it only resembles a superb and 
fantastic medley, and you think that the world has 
had a quarter of an hour of good humor. All that 
line so madly broken by pointed roofs, gothic tow- 
ers, chiosks, bell towers, spires and pyramids, that 
row of brightly colored facades, glistening with 
mosaics and gilding, ornamented with coat of arms, 
decorated with statues, and crowned with banners ; 
which open in colonades and porticos, and rise in 
terraces with balustrades, in enclosed balconies, aereal 
loggie, external stair cases and steps ; between beds 
of flowers and jets of fountains ; that row of little 
villas, palaces and cloisters, Avhose nationality or 
style one cannot recognize at once, only produce at 
first a confused sense of pleasure, like the gay sound 
of a féte, but after the first walk" when you begin to 
recognize the different buildings, the significance of 
the 'spectacle changes. Then from every one of 
those fagades springs an idea, the expression of a 
feeling different from life, like a whiff of air from 
another Heaven, another century, which whispers 
the names of emperors and poets, and brings the 



44 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

sound of distant music, full of thoughts and memo- 
ries. AH these strange buildings so silent and so 
lifeless make a curious impression upon you. It 
seems as if something were being prepared for you 
in there, and as if at the stroke of midday — (just as 
out of so many clocks — ) English chatelains, Flem- 
ish burgomasters, alcaydes of Portugal and priests 
of the white elephant, mandarins and sultans, Athe- 
nians of the time of Pericles, ladies of the four- 
teenth century, ought to appear at all the doors and 
windows ; run along the balconies, and, having made 
their automatic bows, re-enter the houses at the 
last stroke of the bell. The street stretches out to 
a great length — standing half-way down you can 
hardly see at the end, the red and white facades of 
the Netherlands, and the rich claustral door of 
Portugal, beside which are grouped the curious and 
variegated architectures of the small African and 
Asiatic States, quite overwhelmed by the superb and 
lofty buildings of South America. Nearer this way 
towers the Palace of Belgium, severe and magnifi- 
cent in style, with its beautiful columns of dark 
marbles, whose capitals are gilded ; and between the 
aristocratic Belgium and thoughtful Denmark, rises 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 45 

timidly, like a prisoner, little white and lovely 
Greece. Some of the facades seem to have a 
political significance — Switzerland throws brusquely 
forward, with a kind of democratic insolence, its 
enormous bernese roof beside the yellow edifice of 
Holy Russia, which affects the menacing pride of 
an imperial castle. Between the long Austrian 
portico and the black and fantastic facade of China, 
rises the gilded and arabesqued Spain of the Caliphs. 
The theatrical arcades of Italy, brought out in bold 
relief by purple curtains, make a curious impression 
upon one after the two simple and almost melan- 
choly houses of Scandinavia. From behind the 
Italian building springs out unexpectedly the rustic 
facade of Japan, with its great geographical maps so 
full of scholarly pretentions. Finally, nearest the 
entrance, the disdainful United States appear, ap- 
parently not wishing to take part in the strife, and 
contenting themselves by proudly displaying their 
fifty republican coats-of-arms upon a little white 
house, beside which rise the five graceful edifices 
belonging to England. A crowd of strangers who 
come and go, their faces all turned in the same 
direction ; looking with curiosity for the architectural 



4^ STUDIES OF PARIS. 

representative of their respective countries, and 
recognizing it with a smile, give to this strange 
street a charming aspect of gayety, and an air of 
peace and courtesy, which really imbues one with 
the desire to shake hands all around, and found a 
weekly journal announcing the disarming of Europe. 
The first thing I did was to enter the immense 
palace containing the " foreign sections," and I 
found myself in the midst of the magnificent dis- 
order of the English exhibits. Here the first idea 
passing through one's head is to turn on one's heel 
and return home. The first day you pass among 
the English marvels with the indifference of Cretans. 
You wander for awhile among the purest glass, 
china and gold ware, furniture and objects of art, 
borrowed from the inspirations of all times and 
peoples ; fruits of the ingenuity and patience, which 
unite beauty and utility, and represent the severe 
luxury of an aristocracy both rich and faithful to 
its own traditions, that is the observation of a 
people scattered all over the earth. Here you feel 
the air of the great workshops of Manchester, there 
you live for a moment in a castle on the Thames, 
beyond is felt the familiar and quiet poetry of the 



^ GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 47 

tnodest Home^ which is awaiting fortune from ships 
far away at sea. You pass among the marine vege- 
tation of the Cape of Good Hope, the canguri and 
eucalyptus of Victoria and New Wales, the minerals 
of Queensland, the strange jewels of southern Aus- 
tralia, the interminable exhibits of the flora, fauna, 
industry and costumes of all the colonies belonging 
to that immense kingdom, and you have not reached 
the end before you have wandered in thought a 
hundred times around the globe, and are satiated. 
Every change of '' section" has the effect of some- 
thing refreshing on the forehead. A hundred paces 
beyond is another world, and you find yourself sud- 
denly before a most novel spectacle. It is the open- 
i.ng and shutting of surgical beds, a widening and 
narrowing of chairs (which seem alive) for operations 
on the eye, a turning of anatomical tables, an open- 
ing of sets of artificial teeth, a rising of menacing 
and ferocious looking instruments, and a grinding 
and gleaming which makes one shiver. It is not 
necessary to ask what portion of the world you are 
in. The solid goldsmith's wares, the enormous 
vases of silver, the watches of the Californian mines, 
the trophies, battle-axes of Boston, the electrical 



48 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

connections, the paper money and the show-win- 
dows bristling with iron and formidable projectiles, 
a certain powerful and rude pride in the display 
of useful things, announce the exposition of the 
United States, saddened or gladdened, I know 
not which, by the noisy music of organs, harmon- 
iums and pianos, which admirably assist the wan- 
derings of the imagination among the thousand 
objects recalling the hard toils and labor of those 
colonies in the solitudes of the New World. A 
fresh spectacle, however, instantly cancels this vio- 
lent impression. The richness of the carvings of 
the wood-work around the show windows announces 
the country of the great forests, and a thousand 
things recall the sweet melancholy of the beautiful 
lakes crowned by mountains, bristling with pines 
and white with snow. Among the products of the 
mines of Falun and the blocks of nickel, rise the 
trophies of furs, surrounded by the heads of bears, 
otters and beavers ; the colossal stoves, black pyra- 
mids of spherical shaped bottles, skates, cordage 
and the great masses of Swedish matches, succeeded 
by the ceramics, in which shine the pale reflections 
of the northern seas, and the thousand objects 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 49 

carved by the Norwegian peasants in the intermi- 
nable twihghts of winter nights ; images and colors, 
presenting all together a great melancholy picture, 
into which the silvery whiteness of the filagree of 
Christiana scarcely throws a smile like a bright spot 
in a cloudy sky. This spot suddenly enlarges how- 
ever, at the exit of the Scandinavian department, 
and the northern mist is succeeded, in the twinkling 
of an eye, by the vast, cloudless quiet of a spring- 
time sky. A collection of pure, white statues, a 
diffused glistening of crystal, a gleam of silk and 
mosaics, a brilliancy of color and form, before which 
all faces brighten, all hearts open, and all mouths 
exclaim, Italy ! before the eyes have had time to 
read the announcement over the entrance. It is 
really a great scenic effect, which is followed by an- 
other not less marvellous. You pass the -sill of a 
door; have made a two months sea voyage, and are 
in another hemisphere. You find yourself in the 
presence of a new artistic ideal (which confuses and 
jostles violently all the pictures crowded in your 
head up to that point), and among foreign faces, 
strange objects, unexpected combinations of color, 
curious productions of enigmatical industries, which 



50 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

emit unknown perfumes, and excite little by little, 
beside mere curiosity, an admiration increased by 
some indescribable sympathy, like that of nature. 
It is Japan, the France of Asia, which displays its 
colossal vases painted on gold ground, salons fur_ 
nished with porcelain furniture, pictures of birds 
and flowers embroidered on silk, inlaid work in 
ivory, bronze and lace, and a thousand little name^ 
less marvels. In every thing there is that crystaline 
neatness, extraordinary perfection of detail, that 
aristocratic refinement of color, that lovely ingenuity 
of the feminine imagination, Avhich is the peculiar 
and never-to-be-forgotten imprint of its art. Japan 
prepares you for China, but nevertheless it is a great 
leap. Tumult follows the harmony of colors, the 
grotesque, the beautiful, the distorted, the finished, 
confusion, variety and madness, caprice. Upon 
one's first entrance the eye is offended, for in the 
midst of furniture of a thousand unknown forms 
made of rosewood and ironwood, inlaid with ivory 
and mother of pearl, and chased with a prodigious 
amount of patience, rise purple baldachins, screens 
painted with mysterious gardens, fire-screens em- 
broidered with silvered butterflies and gilded birds, 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 5 1 

pagodas of seven storys covered with monsters and 
weird figures, slender chiosks with overturned and 
fringed roofs, from the ceilings of which hang enor- 
mous fantastic lanterns, resembling aerial temples of 
gold and coral, between walls covered with great 
standards of yellow silk ornamented with cabalistic 
characters in black velvet. Turning your eyes from 
these things, you discover the sedan chairs for ladies, 
the mandarin's boots, the curved shoes, opium pipes, 
chopsticks, curious musical instruments, and images 
of Chinese life of every period and every grade of 
society, which satisfy a great deal of curiosity, 
awakening meanwhile a vast deal more, and greatly 
confusing the brain. Oh ! How thoroughly the tired 
mind and eye are rested in coming out of the red 
door of Pekin ! It seems as if you were returning 
to your native country, among brothers and friends. 
Seville sings, Barcellona works and Granada smiles. 
At the first glance I recognized my beautiful friends 
of the time when I was twenty-five. Here are Figaro, 
the poignards of Toledo, the enticing mantillas, the 
magnetic shoes, the speaking fans, the picturesque 
stuffs of Catelonia and Andalusia, Moorish vases, 
embroideries on silk of antique cloisters, and the 



52 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

energetic foot-soldiers of Espartero and Prim, who 
raise their small and pretty chapels à la Ros in the 
midst of the cannon which will destroy the third 
army of Don Carlos ; but it is only a fugitive vision. 
The Alps and Pyrenees pass, as does a diffused 
glitter of crystal, which reflects all the metals and 
pearls, among which gleams on every side the 
'■'• Widerkomme," crowned and in a coat of arms, 
announcing Bohemia. You go on through the 
superb exposition of Vienna watches and rich fur- 
niture borrowed from the latest taste and that of 
the fifteenth century, happily combined ; amid piles 
of soap from the Danube, in the shape of cheeses 
and fruit, among woven glass and the products of the 
Hungarian mines, which last show their precious 

novelty, the black opal ; and then how do you 

get out again ? Are we in the extreme north or in 
the extreme east ? You could imagine one or the 
other, for they are two spectacles in one. Here, the 
precious stones of Siberia, the great blocks of mala- 
chite from the Ural, the white bears and blue foxes, 
enormous stoves, the reddish stuffs of Moscow, a 
thousand painted scenes of the private and grave 
Russian life, with ingenious examples of new methods 



A 



A GLANCE AT THE EXPOSITION. 53 

of teaching, which reveal a flourishing culture ; there, 
the splendid, brigand-like costumes of the Caucasus, 
the barbaric daggers and jewels, and a glimpse of 
the sky of Tartary with a reflection of the sun of 
Persia. Then the goldsmiths' ware and ceramics of 
the byzantine stamp, among which shine the great 
mosaic dishes with gold grounds, a new glory of 
Moscow. A varied and confusing exhibition, in fine, 
which carries the thought in leaps from object to 
object, from the banks of the Vistula to the walls 
of China, and leaves one almost dazed in the pres- 
enee of this immeasurable and deformed empire. 
Suddenly a breath of mountain air brings you a 
vague perfume of Italy, and you find yourself in the 
midst of a thousand things and colors familiar to 
your eye. It is all of Switzerland, fresh, green, 
snowy, vigorous, rich and content. Geneva has sent 
her watches, Neuchàtel her jewels, Choume its ma- 
jolica, Claris her stuffs, Zurich her silks, Interlachen 
her sculpture, Vevay her cigars, and San Gallo and 
Appenzel have filled an immense hall with their 
unrivalled embroideries, before which gathers an 
astonished crowd. From here, however, you al- 
ready get a glimpse, in the neighboring sections, 



54 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

of the art and grandeur of a finer and more opulent 
people. Here are the decorations of princely apart- 
ments, pulpits and choir chairs, wonderfully carved, 
which are reflected in the inlaid floors and colossal 
mirrors, amid bronzes and piano-fortes, and a superb 
ceramic which reproduces the great masterpieces of 
national painting. The laces from Malines, with 
their aerial and aristocratic grace, fill a room crowded 
with ladies whose eyes are sparkling. From the 
walls hang the renowned tapestries of Ingelmunster, 
the beautiful arms of Lieges, near the carvings in 
wood from Spa and the metallic products of the 
Vecchia Montagna, after which you can take breath 
in a cabinet of King Leopold, carved in oak, which 
makes you desire sincerely for one small hour each 
day the crown of Belgium. Then comes a curious 
contrast, namely, the expositions of two countries 
totally different, which seem to be looking at each 
other and quite astonished at finding themselves 
face to face. Picture to yourself on one side the 
skins of white bears killed by Danish navigators 
amid polar ice, on the other, carpets made by the 
hands of beautiful brown maidens in the bright 
villages of the Peloponnesus ; here, woods from the 



A GLANCE AT THE EXPOSITION. 55 

forest of Dodona, there, the sandals of the coarse 
peasants of Flogny ; to the right, the marbles from 
the caves of the Laurium, recalling the glories of 
the ancient chisel; to the left, the fishing nets of the 
Baltic, which make the distant echoes of religious 
and melancholy songs resound in the imagination ; 
and opposite these, pictures of objects found in the 
excavation of famous ground, and in front the 
poetry of immortal ruins and ashes glorified by the 
world, the quiet faces, simple costumes and patri- 
archal fetes of a grave and patient people, indus- 
trious and economical, who inspire and breathe 
the love of quiet work and of an obscure and 
tranquil life. Beyond Denmark opens a new 
and measureless horizon, before w^hich the visitor 
stops, a^id in whose mind are pictured endless 
pampas^ tempests of sand, clouds of grasshoppers, 
innumerable droves of cattle, deserted avenues 
lined by titanic monuments of stone, unending for- 
ests and immense solitary valleys, in which scarcely 
rises the dawn of human life, and here and there 
behind a veil of mist, the hideous and stupefied faces 
of the Incas, listening for the victorious blasts of the 
trumpet of civilization as it advances. Here is a 



56 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

labyrinth of walls and galleries, which lead from 
Peru to Uraguay, from Uraguay to Venezuela, Ni- 
caragua, Mexico, San Salvador, Hayti and Bolivia; 
between the furniture of Buenos Ayres and the 
costumes of the ladies of Lima, the hats made from 
the leaves of the senna, the stuffs of alpaca and 
carpets of wool, among sugar-cane, bamboo, the 
scales of the crocodile, deformed idols and the 
souvenirs of the first conquerors ; until this grand 
and wild picture, which fills you with solemn 
thoughts, is suddenly disturbed by the thousand 
smiling colors and infantile trifles of a Mussulman 
bazaar, from which, through two heavy curtains, one 
catches a glimpse of the mysterious walls of a 
harem. Here you are at Tunis.- Now, for some 
time at least, you will not leave the countries " most 
loved by the sun." Here are the graceful Moorish 
decorations of the empire of the Scherifs, beside 
which Persia displays her regal carpets and richly 
damasked arms. Then comes a little group of semi- 
fabulous countries, and a confusion of indescribable 
things which I seem to have seen in dream. Annam 
with his grotesque furniture and incredible fans; 
Bankok with his curious musical instruments, and 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. $7 

the hideous masks of his dramatic actors ; and Cam- 
bodge (good for him who remembers Cambodge). 
After the story comes the joke, the cupid states, 
the dwarfs of the fair, who rise one on the shoulder 
of the other, in the Rue des Nations, in order to ap- 
pear of some height ; Monaco which offers a table, 
Luxembourg which exhibits school benches, An- 
dorra which presents its laws, and St. Marino which 
displays a small machine. Here the exhibition 
assumes rather an ordinary appearance, but it im- 
mediately becomes rich and severe again, with the 
arcades of the chiosks of Belem, and the walls of the 
Abbey of Bathala, among the models of the ancient 
Portugese architecture which survived the famous 
earthquake ; in the superb Moorish vases, wood 
carvings, beautiful mattings of Lisbon, and in the 
innumerable little painted clay figures, revealing 
types, fashions and costumes, that make you live 
for an hour in the city of Camoens in the street do 
c/itado, and at the Passeio don Pedro de Alcantara 
among the fidalgos, sailors, toreros, bemantled cut- 
throats and the beautiful dark girls of the Bairro 
Alto. Finally the spectacle changes for the last 
time. You re-enter the mist of the north among a 



58 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

people well covered and cared for, who tipple, 
smoke and work with bodies and souls in peace, 
and here we find once more its dykes and canals, 
its little rooms full of comforts, its coarse house- 
wives, spread tables, markets and schools, bridges 
and sleighs. All Holland in fact; damp and gray, 
in which the world terminates and the wearying 
vision vanishes. 

Coming out from here, it is an excellent plan to 
escape, if you can, and take a douche bath in the 
neighboring bath house, and then return to see the 
" French section." In making up the account, you 
find that it is a walk of 8,000 steps. There are 
about two hundred rooms, differing in color and 
gradations of light, but almost all illuminated by a 
soft light, in which the eye rests. Now you seem 
to be in a palace, now in a museum, now in a church 
and now in an academy. France took (in space) 
the lion's share, but knew how to make herself 
worthy of it. One of the most beautiful exhibits 
is that of the glassware, in an exquisite white room 
that attracts the attention on all sides.' It is a 
forest of crystal inundated with light, a palace of 
perforated and chiselled ice, transparent and elegant» 



A GLANCE AT THE EXPOSITION. 59 

in which gleam the colors of every flower and every 
shell, brilliant with gold and silver, amid a diffused 
dazzling of diamantine rays and a confusion of 
numberless rainbows, which makes one close his 
eyes. I leave to others the description of the great 
chandeliers, with their myriads of prisms, the can- 
delabra and engraved vases, bottles and elegant 
sky-blue, blood-red and snow-white cups, the imita- 
tions of Murano, of Baccarat, and the famous enam- 
elled panes of Broccard. I confine myself to the 
expression of a wild admiration for the miraculous 
delicacy of the table sets of Clichy — really manu- 
factured for the banquets of youthful queens — as 
gracefuWand slender as the creatures of a dream. 
Oh ! I detest that coarse banker who will place all 
this loveliness before his ordinary friends of the 
Bourse at his dinner on Christmas day ! 

Almost all the most precious treasures of the Ex- 
position are near this spot. A few steps further on 
you reach the Jewel department, which is one enor- 
mous casket, containing 8,000,000 of francs worth of 
pearls and diamonds, and full of curious rareties and 
marvellously delicate workmanship, that is sufficient 
to make an honest looker-on wish to have his hands 



6o STUDIES OF PARIS. 

tied. There are rooms filled with goldsmiths' ware, 
vases and statues fit for royal apartments, golden 
knives and forks, gleaming altars, and thousands of 
costly little masterpieces, which would excite the 
desire for household luxury in the breast of an Arab 
from the desert. From here you are attracted to 
another side by a strange kind of music made by a 
great number of mechanical birds, who whistle, 
chirp and trill, opening their beaks and moving 
their heads and tails, to announce the exhibition of 
clocks and watches, in which are gathered the most 
beautiful works of the 40,000 workmen of Besangon, 
from the microscopic watches which one could send 
in an envelope to his sweetheart, to the large clocks 
which sound the hour of sweet appointments with 
the stroke of a cathedral bell. Almost all the de- 
partments are announced beforehand by some par- 
ticular thing. Arriving at a certain point, you hear 
the diabolical noise of organs, clarions, violincelli 
and trumpets, resembling the orchestra of madmen, 
and this is the exhibit of musical instruments. Hav- 
ing passed through the upholstery rooms, decorated 
in black, you suddenly feel a whiff of heated air 
blowing in your face, the decorations become flame 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 6l 

color, and you find yourself in the midst of fur- 
naces, ovens, fire-places, gas kitchens, photo-electric 
lamps, heaters and stoves, which stretch out in all 
directions their gigantic arms, and give to the hall 
the gloomy aspect of a workshop. Here, however, 
your head begins to be effected by a mixture of deli- 
cate but subtle perfumes, which excite your imagi- 
ination, and one step further finds you at the expo- 
sition of perfumery, gleaming with a thousand colors, 
so that closing your eyes you dream in a moment 
of all the mortal sins of Paris. These contrasts are 
most frequent. Wander, for example, in the so- 
called department of '* Articles de Paris," filled with 
coffers, combs, baskets, caskets, and the infinite 
number of precious and lovely nick-nacks, which ex- 
press all the refined tastes of elegant life, and you 
feel vitiated by the thousand desires of the dandy 
and womankind. Here suddenly springs up an ugly 
squall of oceanic winds, and a chorus of gloomy and 
rough voices that causes a shock to your nerves. 
You have entered the immense hall, decorated in 
the manner of savages, with enormous ropes and 
cords, the products of the French colonies, lances, 
arrows, strange birds and hideous fetiches, bamboos 



62 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

from Martinique and the elephant feet of Cochin^ 
China, the vegetals of Senegal, the work of those 
transported to Caledonia, and among thousands of 
things, in fact, that relate to you stories of labor, 
pain and perils, and which you leave in a quiet, 
meditative frame of mind. From here you return 
to civilization, among the marvels of ceramics, and 
enter a room presenting the appearance of a picture- 
gallery, in which you see the impecunious lovers of 
this art, with their eyes fairly starting out of their 
sockets. Here one finds the variety and riches of a 
flourishing industry, full of hope and boldness, smiled 
upon by fortune. Imitations from the antique, re- 
juvenated traditions, new victories of the art, such 
as the enamel on gold ground and the wonderfully- 
obtained carmine, busts, statues, landscapes, figures, 
flowers and portraits of a fresh and powerful color- 
ing, which makes them appear like oil-paintings, and 
every sort of colossal decorations, promising to the 
new ceramic a splendid future of conquest (already 
begun at the Exhibition) over architecture. 
Then come regions through which you run ; forests 
of unsheathed and bristling blades and rows of 
rooms in which there are only threads and woven 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 63 

goods, where, thanks to the solitude, you can assume 
the gait of an exhausted vagrant. Suddenly you 
stop before the splendor of the silk department, 
where you find silks of all colors and designs, an- 
tique and new, among which gleam those gold and 
silver embroideries that take the road to the East in 
order to be cut up into caftans and trowsers for the 
beauties of the harem. Here, for the ladies, com- 
mences the kingdom of temptation. The most re- 
served of them cannot control her feelings. It really 
is very entertaining to see the longing glances and 
hear the long and irresistible exclamations of aston- 
ishment resounding before those show cases. 

We enter the lace-room, wherein is displayed the 
work of the hands of five hundred thousand women, 
consisting of veils, imperial flounces and trimming, 
which you could blow into the air with one puff, 
pictures full of airy figures, parasols and fans made 
of spiders' webs, fairy-like embroideries and real 
needle paintings, beautiful enough to make one de- 
mand on his knees (like a king in the Thousand and 
One Nights), and at the risk of being bound to a 
gridiron, the hand of the beautiful unknown em- 
broiderer. Then you enter an Andalusian garden, 



64 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

at the beginning of May ; going from thence among 
the clothing of the two sexes, together with that of 
the hunter and Amazon, and toilets for the ball, 
bath, wedding and death, comedian or cupid, all 
marvels of elegance and taste, before which one sees 
the provincial dressmakers, standing in attitudes of 
profoundest discouragement. Here is a mysterious 
alcove, all white, blue and red, and dimly lighted, 
which you open your arms to embrace, so lovely and 
provoking are those little corsets for girls, nervous 
women of thirty, etc., which reveal the most precious 
secrets of female beauty of every age and form. 
From here return among the fans painted by famous 
artists, that refresh the face and mind with delicious 
landscapes from the Alps and Rhine ; then go into 
a shoe-bazaar, resembling that of Stamboul, where 
you can pass an hour pleasantly in shoeing the imag- 
inary little feet of Circassian princesses and Spanish 
marchionesses ; then among the gilded shawls of the 
Campagna des Indes ; from hence into the room de- 
voted to the objects for travelling and camping, 
which makes the blood of vagabonds boil in their 
veins ; then to the exhibit of playthings, where 
everything is moving, jumping, singing, tinkling, 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 65 

making a noise generally, and fascinating enough to 
reduce all the children in the world to a state of des- 
peration. It is the profusion of things, however, 
that frightens one. You walk among the suspenders, 
of which there are enough to bind up all the pen- 
sioners of Italy ; among the garters, sufficient in 
number to provide all the lovers of Frisia with their 
wedding presents. Thus we go on throngh the long 
gallery of the liberal arts, decorated with severe 
simpHcity, from the Hall of the Missions down 
among the libraries and maps, and among surgical 
instruments and anatomical models, where a few 
silent visitors stop to meditate and take notes. Here 
is the superb book-exhibition of France, first among 
all, where the publishers display on the wall (like 
titles of nobility) the interminable catalogue of il- 
lustrious authors' writings they have given to the 
world — a collection of jewels from Plon, Didot, 
Jouvet and Hachette, which announces to the public 
the long-desired and glorious union of the genius of 
Ariosto and the inspirations of Dorè, the delicate and 
magnificent bindings of Rossigneux, before which 
the hand seizes the pocketbook, and then is raised 
to give a resigned tug to the beard. And so on 



66 STUDIES OF PAJcIS. 

through the brilliant exhibition of arms in the halls 
of the sculpture of metals, a vast museum of im- 
mense bronze clocks, life-sized silver statues, cande- 
labra, lamps and lanterns for the vestibules of pal- 
aces. These are followed by a double row of 
saloons, open like theatres, containing the marvel- 
lous display of furniture, in which alternate the 
graceful styles of the fashion and the correctly ele- 
gant shapes of the renaissance^ the gallery of pro- 
ducts being the last one remaining. You have, 
however, a half hour's walk among the cyclopia 
works of metallic industries, the thousands of enor- 
mous pipes, which present the aspect of walls of a 
grotto of bassalts, through forests of iron and cop- 
per, between the innumerable works of galvanized 
metal, among which towers the colossal vase of 
Dorè; and so on, passing the Christophle Museum 
of statuary, a mountain of furs, a forest of feathers, 
a palace of coral, chemical products, skins and what 
not. Toward the end, the same weariness puts 
wings to your feet, the halls fly by, the different ob- 
jects grow confused, and if there were a railway 
you would take the train, and when you had 
reached the end you would give your head for a 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION, 6/ 

crown, with the firm belief that you were making 
an excellent bargain. 

Let us take a little nap upon one of the thousand 
divans in the Champs de Mars, and then return into 
this great sea. I am only expressing my impressions 
during the first day. Well, the thing which causes 
me the greatest astonishment is not the objects ex- 
hibited, but the art of exhibiting them. Here we 
must admire the inexhaustible fecundity of the hu- 
man imagination. The exposition of the means of 
exposition would be in itself sufficient to call forth 
amazement. Picture to yourself great chiosks of 
carved wood, so light that they look like paper or 
straw, engraved showcases for the display of Scotch 
threads, which cost a thousand pounds a piece, glass 
houses, triumphal arches, species of colossal triumphs 
for the table, laden with objects which could stand 
in the middle of a square. The thread is arranged in 
the form of tabernacles and churches ; the pins, by the 
million, in trophies; the alum of potash in walls, the 
carpets in pyramids which touch the ceiling, the 
glycerine is modelled into busts of celebrated men, 
the soap melted into monumental columns of a mar- 
ble-like appearance, iron pipes joined in the shape of 



68 STUDIES IN PARIS. 

titanic organs or little churches in the Greek style, 
the kettles into Egyptian obelisks, copper cylinders 
into Babylonian columns, and the telegraph wires 
into bell-towers. There is a display of architectural 
oddities carried to such a point as to be laughable. 
One merchant builds a castle of mattresses. The 
neighboring watchmaker raises a pyramid of two 
thousand watch-cases. A Dutchman displays a temple 
of stearine, which could contain twenty people, with 
its statues and steps. A Frenchman constructs a 
temple of crystal, upheld by six columns and sur- 
rounded by a balustrade. An English perfumer 
consecrates a palace to his cosmetics and bottles. 
A Parisian nail manufacturer represents, with nothing 
more or less than his gilt-headed nails, the palace of 
the Trocadero, with its cupola, galleries and cascade. 
A liquor-dealer from Amsterdam makes a cathedral 
altar with his bottles. A perfumer from Rotterdam 
has a fountain of cologne — this to attract attention 
and money. Then add an infinite number of gold 
medals and documents of every sort exposed by 
salesmen, many of whom display even the photo- 
graphs and complimentary letters of their pur- 
chasers ; others assist themselves with mechanical 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 69 

contrivances. The opera hats open and shut by 
themselves ; small wax hands seal letters ; the auto- 
matons call you, the musical boxes amuse you, and 
the exhibitors apostrophize you and give all neces- 
sary explanations. 

Then there are the giants who perform almost the 
same office, for in every exposition there is a great 
deal of this kind of childishness. Here is an enor- 
mous bottle of champagne, large enough to intoxi- 
cate a battalion of sharpshooters ; there a huge cork- 
screw, that seems made to drag up roots. In the 
French exhibition of wrought steel, an immense 
damasked knife, in comparison with which the 
largest Navajas of Spain look like penknives. There 
is a French cask containing five hundred litres, a 
Hungarian one holding one thousand, and that of 
the champagne factory in which are placed twenty- 
five thousand bottles. There are mirrors measuring 
twenty-seven square metres, rails in a single piece 
of fifty metres, and metallic wires twenty-five kil- 
ometres long. Add to this the immense hammer of 
Creusot, weighing eighty thousand kilograms, and 
the gigantic roaster of Maison Baudon, which roasts 
twenty kids at a time. Then the marvels of human 



70 



STUDIES OF PARIS. 



patience — microscopic knives, with their beauti- 
ful sheaths, one hundred and four of which can go 
into the stone of a cherry ; the Oriental carpets 
made of six thousand fragments ; the Spanish bu- 
reau composed of three million pieces of wood ; the 
stuffs costing five hundred francs the metre, only 
five centimetres of which can be woven a day ; the 
set of china from the United States, upon which 
two hundred workmen labored for eighteen months, 
and the chiselled fountain costing a Scotch peasant 
seven years work. In fine, the oddities and the 
whims of human ingenuity, like the needle of 
Emile Praga. This man could have put all these 
questions, in a certain kind of poetry, to his sweet- 
heart : Do you wish a clock that will give wind ? A 
watch made with a sunflower, out of which comes a 
spider to catch a fly? A piece of furniture that is 
transformed into a billiard table, a writing desk, a 
chessboard or dining table at your pleasure ? A 
real boat with rudder and oars, which can be carried 
under your arm to Lake Como? A pocketbook 
that discharges shots ? The map of Europe in a 
handkerchief? A pair of shoes made from the scales 
of a fish? A bed of sealing-wax? An armchair of 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 71 

glass, a violin of majolica and a steam velocipede ? 
Everything is here — the magical watches, the mar- 
vellous pike tops, dolls which talk French, and the 
Spaniards made of wood who teach you how to 
manage a fan. Really, nothing is lacking but Emile 
Praga's needle. 

Then the beautiful things ! They are infinite in 
number, but rather expensive. In fact you cannot 
furnish a house (in imagination) according to your 
own taste, without spending a million in a quarter of 
an hour. At every step you find a piece of furniture 
which takes your fancy, and you are almost tempted 
to do a foolish thing, when, in going up to the card 
containing the price, you see behind a one, that 
gives you a ray of hope, four confounded zeros, 
which resemble four open mouths that laugh in 
your face. It is a continual torment of Tantalus. 
There is only one single comfort to be found, and 
that is that many of these things have already been 
purchased. You have fastened your eyes upon a 
wonderful set from the Maison Christophle, valued 
at four thousand francs, but the Duke of Santofia 
has cheated you out of it. So the duchess has freed 
you from the temptation of carrying home a superb 



T2. STUDIES OF PARIS. 

dress of Colbert & Alengon, which would have cost 
you all your patrimony. Prince Demidorf has car- 
ried off the great malachite vase, adorned with gold, 
and three metres high, that stands in the Russian sec- 
tion. The most beautiful pair of shoes, trimmed with 
lace, in the whole exhibition, belong to the Princess 
Metternich ; the two handsomest muffs of black 
fox are the property of the Princess of Wales, and 
the Emperor of Austria has already put his august 
seal upon an incomparable casket of engraved silver 
which would have been your delight. However, 
something is left us. I would suggest to the ladies 
who are easily pleased, to content themselves with 
an exquisite lace veil in the Belgian exhibition, made 
with a thread that costs five thousand crowns the 
kilogram; and to the judicious married people a 
Chinese bed of rose wood, inlaid with ivory, costing 
more than a passable villa on the banks of Lake 
Como. At the door of this room they might hang 
two silk curtains embroidered in silver and gold, 
which are for sale in the Austrian Department for 
one thousand two hundred Napoleons. There is the 
convenience of being able to purchase entire rooms, 
in fact apartments, of every style and every country. 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION'. 73 

right there on the spot, with a great saving of time 
and annoyance, and there are also some charming 
things within range of a modest purse. Rouvenat's 
sapphire, surrounded with diamonds, which can be 
had at one million and a half ; and by haggling a 
little, you can obtain at a reasonable price a curious 
diamond cut in the form of a gas lantern, and set in 
a microscopic candelabrum of gold, which is really 
very beautiful. All these things make your head 
whirl at first, but you shrug your shoulders and 
walk on without paying any attention to them, say- 
ing: "Trifles! trifles!" with the indifference of a 
frank impostor. 

Then we go to see the exposition of alimentary 
products, rather less dangerous to the fancy; a walk 
of a little less than a mile. Shut your eyes, take 
your head in your hands, and try to imagine how 
much that is strange and rare a man can put into 
his body without risking his life — for there is every 
thing here. You can drink, for fifteen centimes, a 
glass of the fourteen springs of mineral water in 
France, or a glass of the water of the Thermopoli. 
in the Greek section, and a glass of beer from Den- 
mark that has made the tour of the world. Or, if 



74 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

you prefer wine, champagne, made under your eyes, 
all the wines of Spain in pretty bottles for half a 
franc, sold by a beautiful girl from Xerez ; the wines 
of Portugal and Madeira, bottled in 1792, at one 
hundred francs a bottle, including the historicaF 
documents " duly legalized." Then if wine eighty- 
six years old seems too young for you, you can 
have in the French section, in the midst of a group 
of nonagenarian sisters, a bottle of wine of Jura of 
1774, crowned with houseleek, at a suitable price. 
You find the chiosks of Scicilian and Jura wines, all 
the wines of Australia in the miner's hut erected by 
the government of Melbourne, and in the section of 
the English colonies the mysterious wine of Con- 
stantia of the Cape of Good Hope and the enigmat- 
ical wine of the Hermitage of New Wales, made 
from raisins. You have here the wine of Schiraz in 
the Persian Department, the wine of Corinth beside 
the water of the Thermopoli, and you may taste an 
exquisite Tokay in the rustic cafe of Hungary to 
the music of a gypsy band. As far as eating is con- 
cerned, you have only to ask for it. In the pavil- 
ions of the French colonies a creole gives you pine- 
apple, a mulatto bananas, a negro vanilla. You can 



1 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 75 

eat the marmalade from Canada, and soak in a glass 
of the famous St. Hubert of Victoria, biscuits which 
have crossed the Atlantic. You can choose between 
the celebrated fish of Norway and the renowned 
pork of Chicago, or you can do better still. Take 
a piece of raw meat which has come from Uraguay, 
and go and have it cooked yourself with the burn- 
ing mirror of the University of Tours in the gallery 
of the liberal arts of France. Then there are the 
Dutch, American, English and Spanish restaurants. 
You have at your service a hundred pretty girls 
dressed in black and white in a monumental Bouil- 
lon Duval, which looks like an Indian temple. If 
you have a weakness for Russia, you can go to the 
restaurant of that country, where little Polish, Mus- 
covite, Armenian and Caucasian hands bring you 
the real Kumysy from the steppes of the Ural, the 
healing waters of the Neva, the colebiaka of herbs 
and fish, or some other Russo-Turkish medley sea- 
soned with the wine of Cyprus. For sweets, France 
offers you the palace of Fontainebleau ; gothic 
cathedrals of sugar, and appetizing bunches of rose 
and violets, which seem plucked an hour before. 
After dining, you receive your coffee gratis from 



^6 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

the Republic of Guatamala, unless you prefer that 
selected and ground by the negresses of Venzuela. 
Then, for rincette, you can sip a newly invented 
bitters which a Swiss, in the costume of a bernese, 
hands you under the shade of an elegant chiosk, or 
go to the Dutch chiosk, where three beautiful, rosy 
girls with gold helmets give you schiedam or cura- 
coa. If you dare run the risk, try the liquor of figs 
in the pavilion of Morocco, made gay by the strum- 
ming of three players, one of whom weighs one 
hundred and ninety kilograms with his stomach 
empty ; or put between your lips a new kind of 
cigar, which, instead of a cloud of smoke, sends a 
glass of brandy into your mouth. Have you had 
enough ? Ah, you wish to smoke ! Very well ; 
here are the pungent cigars of the Republic of 
Andorra, and the magnificent display of cigars from 
Cuba, of every size and form, gilded, crested and 
odorous — real works of art — scattered by myriads, 
before which an Italian smoker, exhausted from 
suffering, passes '' sighing and trembling." All this 
double gallery of alimentary products is worthy of 
admiration for its variety and richness. It is an 
interminable architecture of bottles, which rise in 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 77 

towers, winding stairs, many colored and sparkling 
steps ; a multitude of little temples gleaming with 
gold and crystals, which could cover the statues of 
deities, and do cover salted pork ; a splendor of little 
theatres, altars, thrones and libraries full of dainties, 
so gracefully arranged and decorated that the great 
painter of the halles of Paris could make of it a 
magnificent picture for one of his future romances. 

The most beautiful spectacle is that presented by 
the people. At certain hours the enclosure of the 
Exhibition is more densely populated than many 
cities. The visitors enter by twenty gates. The 
avenues, vestibules, galleries, traversable passages 
and the labyrinth of the Halles of the Champs de 
Mars, is one black swarm, and you have great 
trouble in not getting lost — especially in the " for- 
eign sections," where the vendors themselves seem 
a pleasing sort of anthropological exposition. There 
are a great number of beautiful English girls who 
work at their registers, intent and impassible, in 
the midst of that confusion, as if they were at home. 
The Japanese — dressed like Europeans — talk and 
play, seated around their small tables, perhaps with 
a little ostentation, to give themselves the appear- 



78 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

ance of people who feel quite comfortable at their 
places in the heart of western civilization ; and in 
fact have already so assumed the air of home, that 
scarcely any one looks at them. The Chinese, on 
the contrary, are always surrounded by a circle of 
curious people, on whom they cast, from time to 
time, a disdainful glance, which reveals, like a flash 
of lightning, the stubborn pride of their race, and 
then resume their idol-like impassibility, from which 
only the voices of the purchasers arouse them. 

One sees eastern merchants in turbans, dragging 
their sandals among all those marvels, and looking 
around idly with the same stupid and irritating in- 
difference which they would display in their old 
booths at the bazars. Occasionally we find three 
or four enthusiasts before a face in papier-mache, or 
a puppet that moves its arms. There are many 
Algerines, Arabs, Moors and Negroes. Bands of 
Spahis meet, enveloped in their great white man- 
tles, but they no longer have the bold faces of 1859. 
The pride of the old African army no longer shines 
in their eyes. How a lost cause changes the face ! 
Here and there one sees copper-colored faces and 
some of those harlequin-like costumes of the 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. Jg 

countries bordering on China. Besides these there 
is an immovable and silent multitude of people 
from every country, who produce a curious effect. 
Every moment you graze the elbow of some one, 
who seems to be a living being, and is only a great 
puppet, colored and well dressed, which makes you 
open your eyes with astonishment. There are 
savages from Peru, people from Australia with their 
woolly heads, mediaeval warriors, elegantly dressed 
ladies, Italian soldiers, peasants from Denmark, 
Malay laundresses, civil guards of Spain, and In- 
dians, Kafirs and Hottentots, who suddenly appear 
before you, fixing their dreamy eyes upon you, like 
phantoms. The spectacle is still further varied and 
enlivened by a large number of ladies moving around 
in wheel-chairs, or children's carriages, drawn by a 
servant, or pushed from behind by their husbands and 
followed by their children; weighty matrons, who 
fill every portion of the little vehicle ; tall English 
•girls, who sit curled up with their knees on a level 
with their chins ; decrepid old men, who are prob- 
ably enjoying here the last pleasures of life ; old 
paralytic patricians, and marvellously blonde and 
rosy cupids of northern countries, who form alto- 



8o 



STUDIES OF PARIS. 



g 



ether, in that labyrinth of streets lined with glass 
es, a species of comic co 



*so worthy of the pencil 
of Cham. In the street of the nations, under the 
shade of little straw huts, many people are eating 
breakfast on their laps, as if they were travelling, 
and the children go to get water at the fountains 
of Japan and Italy ; others munch their bread and 
ham as they walk along ; some happy couples are 
sweetly sleeping on the chairs in the midst of the 
crowd ; other couples, who have brought their love 
to the Exposition, take advantage of two neighbor- 
ing huts to indulge in a few secret caresses. It is 
very amusing too to study the different types of the 
visitors in the halls. There are those wild horses 
who race hither and yon without seeing a blessed 
thing, apparently seized by a kind of feverish exal- 
tation, and the patient visitors, who have laid out a 
programme for themselves, and move one step every 
quarter of an hour, meditating upon the catalogues, 
looking, examining and discussing the most trivial 
thing, and who will probably take six months to 
make the tour of the Champs de Mars. Among 
the exhibitors one sees the radiant faces of the 
fortunate ones, who have found glory and fortune 



A GLANCE AT THE EXPOSITION. 8 1 

there, and enthrone themselves upon their benches 
in the midst of a crowd of curious people and 
purchasers ; and the poor disappointed wretches, 
seated in their solitary corners, with bowed heads 
and melancholy faces, meditating upon lost hopes. 
In the last rooms the divans are occupied by weary 
visitors. You see entire families of excellent people 
from the country, worn out, dazed and stupefied ; 
the papas covered with perspiration, the mammas 
stifled, the girls grown hunch-backed, the little ones 
dead with sleep ; in such a state, in fact, that one is 
tempted to ask : " Who did advise you to come 
to the Exhibition, you poor unfortunate people ? " 
The greatest crowd is under the large arcades of the 
art exhibition, and around the pavilion of the City 
of Paris, which raises its gayly flagged fronts in the 
centre of the Champs de Mars. This is the rendez- 
vous of the staff of the Exposition. Here the 
artists, commissioners from all countries and the 
workmen gather and separate, the critics gesticulate 
wildly, the journalists take notes, the artists sketch, 
discussions grow warmer, the curious seek for illus- 
trious faces, the new arrivals find each other, and 
the celebrities of the Exhibition pass amid bows and 



82 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

salutations. Here is Monsieur Hardy, for instance, 
the architect of the palace of the Champs de Mars; 
here is Monsieur Duval, the director of the hydraulic 
works, and Messieurs Bourdais and Davioud, the 
architects of the palace of the Trocadero. If you 
happen to have a rather curious face, and have two 
friends walking with you, who address you with an 
air of respect, you can easily pass for a prince or a 
king who is visiting the Exhibition strictly incog., 
and you hear around you, here and there, the sub- 
dued murmur of a court. There is something for 
every kind of taste, something to satisfy all needs 
and repair all accidents. You can telegraph home, 
write your letters, have a bath, take a shock of 
electricity, be weighed, carried, photographed, per- 
fximed and taken care of ; there are stations for 
firemen, guards, pharmacies and infirmaries — noth- 
ing is lacking but the cemetery. Then there are 
fixed hours for study and scientific experiments, 
when the visitors gather at given points. Here, in 
the French section, they communicate to the public 
the works of the library of the corps of instruction ; 
farther on, a professor explains anatomical models ; 
in the Russian section experiments are being made 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 83 

of the passage of air through walls ; an American 
physician is showing surgical apparatus ; a dentist 
is extracting roots with an instrument worked by 
steam. You can go and witness the manufacture 
of French cigarettes, and see the paper of Darblay's 
mills made, the experiments of electric light in the 
Russian pavilion, or those of heating and illumina- 
tion in the park of the Champs de Mars. Others 
go to see the experiments with Bell's telephone, 
or telegraphic appliance, which transmits with one 
single wire two hundred and fifty despatches in an 
hour, or the semaphore of our Pellegrino ; or if you 
like better, to read the old trials for witchcraft ex- 
hibited in the pavilion of the French Minister of 
the Interior. Meanwhile teachers explain new 
methods of instruction. All the inventors have 
their circle of auditors, all the new machines are in 
motion, the colossal albums open, the geographical 
maps are unfolded, the globes are turned, and a 
thousand instruments are being played. On every 
side there is some spectacle, a school or conference ; 
the Exhibition has become an enormous interna- 
tional athenaeum which gives us for one franc all 
human knowledge. 



84 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

That which attracts the most people at all hours, 
is, however, the exhibition of Fine Arts. But I 
scarcely have the courage to enter it. Yet I am com- 
forted by the thought that I am only obliged to give 
a confused impression of my first visit. There are 
eighteen galleries in a succession of pavilions which 
extend from one end of the Champs de Mars 
to the other. The entire world is here — one may 
truly say — the past and present, visions of the 
future, battles, fetes, martyrdoms, cries of anguish 
and the laughs of the insane ; all the great human 
comedy with an infinite variety of scenes, in which 
one turns from the palace to the hut, from deserts 
of ice to deserts of sand, and from sublime heights 
to the most mysterious depths of the earth. This 
is the portion of the Exhibition where the deepest 
impressions are m.ade. How many tearful eyes I 
have seen, how many expressions of pity, sorrow 
and horror and how many beautiful smiles on beau- 
tiful faces remain impressed upon my memory like 
a reflection of that picture. The enormous museum 
opens with the French exposition of sculpture, fol- 
lowed by the rooms belonging to England. Here — 
to speak frankly, of all that pale, transparent style 



A GLANCE AT THE EXPOSITION. 85 

of painting in limpid colors full of delicate thought 
and beautiful minutiae, I only remember that superb 
glorification of warlike old age of Herkomer, called 
The Invalids of Chelsea, before which one bares 
his head in veneration ; The Poor of London of 
Luke Fildes, which made me feel the cold of a Jan- 
uary night and the agony of poverty without a 
shelter ; and Daniel among the Lions, of Breton 
Rivière, in which the sublime tranquility of the man 
in comparison with that group of wild beasts, fam- 
ished but fascinated, subdued and overwhelm.ed by 
an invisible and superhuman power, is rendered 
with a force which fills the heart with the mysterious 
fear inspired by genius. I pass hastily before a 
hundred other pictures, impelled by my impatience 
to reach Italy, v/here I find a smiling crowd making 
love to the statues. I hear one person muttering, 
" Tell me that these things came from the land of 
Michel Angelo ! " But all the faces round about 
express a feeling of calm and loving admiration. 
Before the pictures of De Nittis, the bold and fine 
painter of Paris and London, there is a group of 
people who are disputing the space, and one can 
easily discover from the movement of the faces, 



86 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

the rapidity of the gestures, the excitement of the 
dialogues, that clashing of different opinions, from 
which fly the sparks that form the aureola. Some 
one remarks : " Beautiful pages for an illustrated 
paper ! " But you breathe the air of the Boule- 
vards, feel the dampness of the Thames, divine the 
hour, recognize those faces and live that life. In 
the other room I look around to see if there is a 
Pasini, in order to cry out to him — " Welcome, 
oh ' brother of the Sun ! * " His superb Orient is 
there, gazed at by a thousand thoughtful eyes. And 
I wish to see Michetti, the dear face of that disso- 
lute genius, to take his cheeks between my first 
finger and thumb, and say to him that I adore those 
beautiful limbs of his bathers and the fabulous blue 
of his seas. Ah, here is Jenner at last ! and here I 
observe something very singular. The people who 
enter with a smile on their lips, stop and frown — 
all faces reflect fugitively, the intent and resolute 
face of Jenner, as if all, for a moment, felt in their 
own hand, the beneficial lancet of the surgeon, and 
the resisting arm of the child ; all are thinking, and 
no one speaks. Those who have moved off, either 
stop, or return, as if they were drawn back by the 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 8/ 

tenacious thread of a thought. What a satisfaction 
this is to me ! And I instantly experience another 
in a neighboring room in encountering the honest 
and benevolent face of Monteverdi which accom- 
panies me to the Italian frontier. From thence I go 
into the rooms of foreign paintings, where the skies 
become clouded and the air grows chilly. Norway 
and Sweden have painted their melancholy twilights, 
gray autumnal mornings, strange moonlights on 
strange seas, and fishermen and shipwrecked crews 
in which the deep, sweet love of country, colored by 
a feeling of manly sadness, is more strongly dis- 
played than art itself ; one hundred and fifty pic- 
tures, all overwhelmed by the '' Swedish soldiers 
bearing the body of Charles XII,'' down the slope of 
a solitary road, in the snow, bleeding, sad, but 
proud ; a beautiful and solemn picture of QEder- 
strom, conceived by the soul of a poet, and felt by 
the heart of a soldier. Then follow the United 
States. The great workman's hand of this colossus 
of a hundred heads is not yet accustomed to wield- 
ing the brush. I only remember the laugh of Ham» 
ilton's beautiful women and the ridiculous faces in 
a picture by Brown. Most of the other paintings 



88 STUDIES OF PARIS, 

betray the work of artists who have left home, 
studied at Paris, Dusseldorf, Munich and Rome, and 
taken the coloring, though diluted, of their adopted 
countries. Then comes France, who has outdone 
all the rest of the world in this department. His- 
tory, legend, mythology, the Napoleonic epopèe^ 
mundane life, portraiture, miniature and enormous 
pictures ; mad audacity and corrupt pedantry ; 
everything is here ; but above all a great wealth of 
invention and thought, which reveals the powerful 
aid of an imaginative and popular literature, of a 
lively and diffused dramatic sentiment, and of the 
varied,' full, tumultuous life in an enormous metrop- 
olis. In the first rooms I catch a glimpse of the 
sentimental and affected pictures of Bouguereau. 
Dorè has placed there one of his thousand visions 
of a hidden world, in which one can scarcely distin- 
guish some vague forms of terrestrial creatures and 
things. 

Then comes that serene and classic style of Albert 
Maignan, and that imaginative and confused one of 
Isabey, in which one seems to be looking through 
the veil of a dream into a distance of space and 
time. In another room is Boulanger's picture rep- 



Hj 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION, 89 

resenting the terrible phantom of Saint Sebastian 
appearing before Maximian ; and Moreau, who 
wearies and torments the mind with the phantasies 
of his bibHcal and mythological dreams, full of ter- 
rors, illusions and enigmas, which confusedly cling 
to one's memory like the gloomy and mysterious 
formulas of a conjurer. Then follow the portraits 
full of life and power. Dubufe presents Emile 
Angier, Gounod and Dumas ; Durand, Girardin ; 
Perrin, Daudet ;;, and Thiers lives again gloriously 
on the canvas ofBonnat, before which a crowd 
gathers. Another silent and motionless group an- 
nounces, in the same room, the marvellous minia- 
tures of Meissonnier. Farther on, the elegant 
patrician women of Cabanel smile, and Laurens 
draws from all a sigh in representing together, in 
his noble Marceau, beauty, bravery and death. 
Going on, I find that marvellous curving of spines 
which has made the world smile ; V Eminence 
Grise of Gerome, and the formidable Execuiioiier 
of poor Henri Regnault ; a superb but sad picture 
which serves as the cover for a sepulchre. And 
finally, the gigantic and tragic canvases of Benjamin 
Constant. Rizpah driving off the vulture from the 



90 



STUDIES OF PARIS. 



scaffold of the sons of Saul, and Mahomet II who 
is breaking into Constantinople amid ruin and death-, 
in the same room where the poisoned slave of Sylves- 
tre writhes under the eyes of impassible Nero, and 
th.Q David of Ferrier raises the monstrous head of the 
giant. At the right hangs Duval's great Bacchanal. 
You leave here wearied and dazed, as if you had 
witnessed one of Shakespeare's tragedies, and find 
yourself among the enormous historical pictures of 
Austria-Hungary, gleaming with arms, gold and 
silk, and the great portraits à la Vandyck and Velas- 
quez, which give to the place the grave and mag- 
nificent appearance of a palace. Here I would like 
to kiss the forehead of Thunkassy, who painted 
that divine head of Milton, and cry bravo before 
the supurb canvas of Makart, lighted up by the 
white face of Charles V, upon which gleams a 
thought as vast as his kingdom, and a never to be 
forgotten expression of youthful grace and serene 
majesty, which makes us add our applause to the 
noise of his triumph. Here is Don Quixote, the 
ManolaSy Majos, the lovely portraits of Madrazo, 
and the Lucrezia Romana of Plasencia, in which we 
discover a touch of Goya's boldness. But there is 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. QI 

one wall before which the heart aches. Poor, dear 
Fortuny, beautiful flower of Seville, who bloomed 
at Rome ! His masterpieces are there, warm, lumi- 
nous, full of laughter and light, devoured by the 
eyes of a deeply touched throng — and he lies in the 
grave. So too, poor Zamacois can never come to 
enjoy the triumphs of his beautiful scenes represent- 
ing monks and madmen, as in the Austrian rooms 
Cermak can never see the glistening and tear- 
dimmed eyes before his glorious dying Montenegrin. 
How many noble and beloved artists are lacking at 
this festival ! The eye still seeks them in the 
crowd, while the thought wanders to distant ceme- 
teries, and their pictures cast over all the sadness of 
a last farewell ! In the other rooms, I have only an 
indistinct recollection of seas in a storm, steppes 
lighted by the moon, solemn sunsets over immense 
solitudes of snow, and dreary landscapes of Finland 
and Ukrania, among which appear confusedly the 
menacing faces of Ivan the terrible, and Peter the 
Great, and the bleeding bodies of Bulgarian martyrs. 
It seems as if art were resting here in order to raise 
itself again, more fresh and vigorous than before. 
And it does rise in Belgium, rich and inspired, bear- 



92 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

ing the imprint of a particular character, and nour- 
ished by hard study and glorious traditions. A. 
Stevens and Villems exhibit their pictures of cos- 
tumes, admirable for coloring and grace, and J. 
Steavens his inimitable dogs ; Wauters and Cluy- 
senaar triumphantly overcome all the great dangers 
of historical painting and the delicate difficulties of 
portraiture ; and a hundred other artists vie with 
each other in an infinite variety of landscapes full of 
poetry, melancholy marine views, exquisite heads of 
children, clever jokes and lovely fancies, which ele- 
vate the mind and enlarge the heart. Then- come 
Portugal and Greece ; great names, but little things. 
Yet there are, however, some neglected and despised 
pictures, which make an indelible impression upon 
one, like the Megarian mother of Rallis, that poor 
fisherman's wife seated in her wretched room, with 
folded hands, her eyes fixed on the empty cradle, 
made of four rough boards, in the act of saying : 
" No longer there ! " — while the linen clothes still 
fresh, give one to understand that the child has just 
been carried away, and upon that scene of desola- 
tion falls through the open window, a bright ray of 
the rising sun, which waked him every day ; there is 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 93 

something lacking in the expression, perhaps, but 
the sentiment is so sublime that it almost makes 
one sigh. After Greece comes the fresh and easy 
style of painting peculiar to Switzerland — varied 
in a hundred ways ; the true representative of a 
country formed of a hundred parts and of a family 
of wandering artists in search of an ideal, a school 
and a centre of sentiments and ideas ; who mingle 
with their rugged country, cascades, ravines, glaciers 
and the hurricanes of the Alps, the smiling shores 
of Sorrento, the arabesqued architecture of Cairo, 
the burning solitudes of Syria, the deserted cam- 
pagna of Rome and every kind of souvenir of their 
varied and adventurous life ; similar to that of their 
forefathers, who wore the uniforms of all the princes 
and shed their blood for every flag Switzerland is 
followed by Denmark, who reminds the world of her 
warlike glories, in the battle of Isted, by Sonne, and 
the naval battle of Lamera by Mastrand. It is a 
beautiful sight to see these people pass, every one 
of whom displays with love and pride their soldiers, 
kings, beautiful women, children, cathedrals and 
mountains. The feeling of sympathy which one of 
these, seen by itself, would not inspire in you takes 



94 STUDIES OF PARIS, 

possession of you in seeing them all together ; and 
the heart responds and assents to all those signs of 
love of country with an outburst of affection which 
takes in all the world. The other Danish pictures 
are landscapes showing the pale effects produced by 
the sun in snowy countries, on parks, feudal castles, 
and great forests, and familiar home scenes, ingenu- 
ously felt and rendered with scrupulous fidelity, 
leaving in the mind the thousand images of faces, 
attitudes, objects and occupations, which a month's 
sojourn in Denmark would do. From here I come, 
almost unconsciously, into the rooms devoted to 
Holland, where one finds a style of painting which 
seems clouded by the mists of great watery plains, 
and I see in fact, quite indistinctly, as if through a 
veil, the poor and infirm of Israels, the painter of 
misery ; the beautiful marine views of Mesdag ; the 
poldars of Gabriel, the cats of Henrietta Ronner, and 
a hundred other gray, gloomy, damp, ill-humored 
looking pictures, among which I seek in vain for a 
ray of that marvellous light of Rembrandt, or the 
reflection of the loud, irresistible laugh of Steen. 
The last is the great room belonging to Germany, 
magnificent and sad, in which one becomes aware 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION: 9$ 

Upon entering, of the enormous void left by Kaul- 
bach. Yet it is a powerful school of painting which 
drinks in new life at the living fountains, and is 
strengthened by diffuse study, varied, bold, manly, 
full of sentiment and very acute in observation and 
aim, which awakens a pensive admiration and 
touches the most delicate chords of the heart. I 
shall never forget, either the living and speaking 
heads of Knaus, the flaming workshop of Menzel, 
or the superb cossacks of Brandt, the profound sad- 
ness of Hoff's baptism, the comical laughter of the 
soldiers and nurses of Werner, the admirable mother 
and father of Hildebrand, who, startled by a terrible 
presentiment, are questioning the distorted face of 
the sick child. And with this feeling of sadness 
in my heart, I leave the Exhibition of Fine Arts. 

But I was seized by another thought as soon as I 
was outside. The thousand artists, famous or un- 
known, young men who sent their first inspirations 
there, and old ones who left us their last, passed 
before my mind. I saw them scattered throughout 
the world, in their studios full of light, opening upon 
solitary fields, gardens, on the sea or noisy street ; 
and I thought how much life they had thrown into 



96 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

those hundred rooms, through which I had hastily 
passed, how much of their souls they had put into 
those canvases, how many inspirations of lovers and 
wives, how many night-w^atches, how many hours of 
meditation, how many broken brushes, how much 
blood from pierced hearts, how many reminiscences 
of adventure and distant wanderings, what an im- 
mense epopèe of loves, sorrows, triumphs and mis- 
eries were represented by those pictures ! How 
many of these painters had already descended into 
the tomb, consumed by the tremendous fevers of art, 
and how many others still young and full of life 
would follow them ! What an immense treasure of 
imagery of sentiment and ideas were carried away 
by the millions of visitors from all over the world ! 
And thinking of these things with my eyes turned 
toward that long row of pavilions, I felt myself sud- 
denly seized by such an intense feeling of affection 
and gratitude, that if any painter had chanced to 
pass me, I should certainly have thrown my arms 
around his neck. 

The last room of the Fine Arts leads to the gallery 
of labor. One can scarcely fancy a stranger change 
of scene. Here everything is noise and bustle. You 



I 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 



97 



see all the little industries at work. There are a 
great number of square and circular benches, which 
serve at the same time as workshop and store, where 
men, women and boys are constantly working in the 
midst of a crowd of curious people, who form an 
unbroken chain of great, black and mobile rings, 
reaching from one end of the immense hall to the 
other. Here they work in gold, tortoise-shell, ivory 
and mother-of-pearl ; they manufacture objects in 
filigree, make fans, brushes, portmonnaies and 
watches. There is, among others, a group of work- 
men who are making dolls with the rapidity of con- 
jurors, and others who manufacture flowers of linen, 
•enamel and the feathers of tropical birds, with a 
facility and grace that makes them seem to bloom 
under their fingers. In other portions of the hall 
they are weaving silk, painting on porcelain, working 
in copper, making guttapercha and manufacturing 
meerschaums. In one corner you see the patient 
hands of Normandy working lace. In the centre of 
the hall they are cutting diamonds. Here there is 
a shower of visiting cards, there of pins, further on 
of buttons. On one side they are making braids and 
chignons, on the other baskets and boxes of straw. A 



gS STUDIES OF PARIS. 

group of Indians, their heads covered with enor- 
mous turbans, are working on shawls. It is a long 
row of little furnaces, vibrating machines, gas jets, 
bowed heads, hands in motion, of people who are 
asking questions, and people who are answering 
them ; a chatter, a gay bustle, a busy and rapid 
working, which arouses in one the mania to do some- 
thing too. The high ceiling echoes noisily the acute 
sounds, so that they seem the joyous cries of chil- 
dren, the measured beat of a hundred hammers, the 
scree.ching of the files and saws, a crystalline and 
metallic tinkling, and the dull rumble of the mul- 
titude passing in groups, processions and bodies, like 
a disbanded army, in order to spread itself through 
the outer gardens or halls of the machinery. 

Here the spectacle is worthy of an ode by Victor 
Hugo. At the first moment you seem to be under 
the arched roof of a London station. There are 
two galleries as long as the Champs de Mars, very 
broad and full of light, in which a thousand enor- 
mous machines, an army of cyclops in metal, men- 
acing and superb, raise their heads, arms, clubs, 
blades, thick and intricate, up to the highest arch, 
producing the uproar of a battle. An immense 



mi 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 99 

transformation of things is taking place on all sides. 
The sheet of paper comes out in the shape of an 
envelope, twine becomes rope, bronze is transformed 
into medals, brass wire is changed into pins, yarn 
into stockings ; a piece of wood emerges in the form 
of fragments of furniture ; the Swiss embroiderer 
works with three hundred needles ; the English pa- 
pyrograph reproduces three hundred copies of one 
manuscript ; the soap machine cuts cakes, wraps 
them up and weighs them, while Marivoni's machine 
turns out folded newspapers ; the gigantic looms of 
Birmingham and Manchester work beside the miner's 
extracting machines ; the great ice machine emits a 
furious icy breath among the fiery exhalations of the 
gas machines ; others cut diamonds, others tear and 
twist metal as if it were dough, others wash, refine, 
transfuse, draw, paint and write ; in other portions 
of the hall is felt the marvellous and horrible life of 
monsters with a hundred mouths and hands, which 
irritate the nerves, deafen the ears and confuse the 
mind. Here and there one sees the raw material 
disappear into the gloomy mouths of those colossal 
creatures, and reappear above, some moments after- 
wards, half worked up, as if carried in triumph ; 



lOO STUDIES OF PARIS. 

then hidden again, dashed below to suffer the final 
torments. Here the arms of giants are at work, 
there the fingers of a fairy. On one side work pre- 
sents itself under the aspect of a bloodthirsty de- 
stroyer, between enormous iron teeth and claws of 
steel, which crush and tear to pieces with an infernal 
racket, in which one hears the confused sound of 
human laments, among an intricate, dizzy and fero- 
cious set of wheels that would reduce to powder a 
titan as if he were a trifle in glass. On another side 
the tame monster caresses the imprisoned material, 
rolls it into balls, smooths it, and polishes it as if it 
were only at play. Other colossal machines, like 
those for weaving, make strange and mysterious mo- 
tions, almost human in appearance, with a certain 
languid grace peculiar to feminine movements, which 
inspire one with an inexplicable spirit of repugnance, 
as if they were living beings whose form one could 
not understand. 

Among the large members of all these immense 
laborers there moves, like a secret life, an indescrib- 
able mass of little wheels, which seem motionless, 
of saws that look like wires, of delicate and almost 
invisible connections which vibrate, tremble and 



I 



A GLANCE AT THE EXPOSITION. lOI 

shake, making appear larger (in comparison with 
their own littleness) the enormous wheels, colossal 
hinges, titanic boilers, huge belts, cranes, pistons, 
and monstrous pipes which rise like monumental 
columns, and succeed each other in one unending 
row, presenting the appearance of some strange 
deformed city of metals, in which a legion of con- 
demned people or madmen struggle with their 
chains. But man too works ; a large number of 
women are sewing on machines ; workmen tend the 
great machines, and mechanics and artisans from all 
countries carelessly dressed, watch, take noteS;, and 
rush everyvv'here among the pistons and wheels at 
the risk of their lives ; among whom one sees here 
and there pale and thin faces, but full of life, over 
which flashes the gleam of an iron will and an im- 
placable ambition. Who knows? obscure workmen 
to-day, perhaps glorious inventors to-morrow. All 
the enormous gallery is filled with the bustle of 
work, and at first the turmoil tires and saddens one. 
But little by little, becoming accustomed to it, and 
fixing your mind upon it, in that frightful turmoil 
of whistles, puffings, bursts, grindings, groans and 
shrieks, you hear the deep voice of the multitude, 



102 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

the exciting cry of the struggle and the formidable 
hurrah of human victory. The man who, upon 
entering, felt himself crushed, after regaining his 
self-consciousness, contemplates that immense 
power, set in motion and controlled by human 
thought, with a sense of pride, in which his being is 
strengthened and elevated. Then that immense 
arsenal of peaceful arms, the banners as large as 
sails which wave from the ceiling, filled by the air 
made by those innumerable wheels, those savage 
monuments of cordage and nets, pyramids of spades 
which serve to break up the deserts of the new 
hemisphere, the columns of fishing tackle for catch- 
ing the great cetaceous of polar seas, the gigantic 
trunks of virginal forests, the colossal armor of the 
divers, the towers of merchandise, the lighthouses 
revolving among the clouds of smoke, the jets of 
water and showers of vapor from the machines 
worked by steam, this grand and terrible spectacle, 
saluted by the detonations of the gas machines, the 
blast of the fog-horns, the solemn peal of the distant 
organs (which carry into that inferno the poetry of 
hope and prayer), little by little take possession of 
you, and stir all the faculties of your mind, start all 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION: IO3 

the springs of activity and courage, light in your 
heart the fever of battle, making you leave the place 
with your mind full of bold designs and glorious 
resolutions. 

From the hall of the French machinery, you enter 
a long avenue all rose color, and from thence * * 
But there is not one reasonable reader who expects 
me to give a description of the so-called annexOr- 
tions of the palace of the Champs de Mars, which 
form in themselves a second universal exposition. 
There are two miles of gardens, sheds, pavilions, 
rustic houses, in which recommence the series of 
museums and workshops, sufficient in number to 
keep one busy for a month. These are only occu- 
pied by specialists. The majority of the visitors 
only go there for the sake of the fresh air. Yet 
here one can get an idea of the cost of that transi- 
tory city, and the expense of keeping it up. It is 
something that really startles one. You must take 
into consideration the labor of grading it, for which 
five hundred thousand cubic metres of earth were 
excavated and carried off; imagine the enormous 
trench which runs under the palace of the Champs de 
Mars, and distributes into sixteen large currents the 



I04 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

condensed air from the ventilators ; picture to your- 
self the powerful action of the great generators, 
which provide steam to the motive machines ; the 
tremendous work of the thirty motive machines 
which transmit life to all the machinery in the 
Exhibition ; the perpetual motion of the formidable 
pumps which draw the water from the Seine and 
distribute it, through a labyrinth of subterranean 
reservoirs and canals, among the conduits of the 
Champs de Mars, basins, fountains, sewers, eleva- 
tors of the towers, and the cascade of the Troca- 
dero ; think of the number of railroad tracks which 
covered that space during the work of construction, 
and the innumerable machines which aided man in 
placing the enormous things in their respective posi- 
tions ; then recall to mind the immense labor of the 
last month accomplished by an army of workmen 
from every country, swarming on the roofs, cupolas, 
in the depths of the earth, suspended by ropes, stand- 
ing on dizzy heights, in groups, in bands, in chains, 
night and day, by the light of torches, gleam of 
electric light, amid clouds of dust and mist, urged 
on by thousands of voices in a hundred tongues, in 
the midst of a tumult like the sea in a storm and 



A GLANCE A T THE EXPOSITION. 10$ 

the tremors of impatience of the world, and in fine, 
remember that there issued from this show, almost 
unexpectedly, that marvellous caravansary of a hun- 
dred nations, full of treasures, vegetation and life, and 
that twenty-four months before all this had only been 
a desert ; then one can no longer refrain from giving 
vent to that feeling of admiration, which at one's 
first entrance was disturbed by a disagreeable effect 
produced by the general appearance of things. 

One ought to see this great spectacle in the 
evening from the high galleries of the Trocadero. 
At that height, embracing with one glance, as from 
the summit of a mountain, that immense plain full 
of memories, which witnessed the symbolical fetes 
of the revolution and heard the hurrahs of the ar- 
mies of Marengo and Waterloo ; that enormous and 
magnificent palace, upon which wave all the flags of 
the earth ; the great river, vast parks, thousands of 
roofs, the hundred torrents of humanity winding 
through that immense enclosure, inundated with the 
warm golden light of sunset, the mind opens to a 
thousand new thoughts. One thinks of the mil- 
lions of human beings who worked to fill that end- 
less museum, from the glorious artists of the world 



I06 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

to the solitary laborers and those unknown cot- 
tagers ; of the thousands of things gathered there, 
on which have fallen the tear of the working woman 
and the sweat of those condemned to hard labor; 
of the treasures acquired at the cost of numberless 
lives ; of the victories obtained by the accumulated 
labor of ten generations; the riches of kings, copy- 
books of children, the shapeless sculptures of slaves, 
all placed together under those arches in a sort of 
holy equality for the inspection of the world ; of the 
fabulous journeys those works and products have 
made, sent down the mountain sides on sledges, car- 
ried by the caravan through forests and across de- 
serts, brought from the bottom of the sea and the 
bowels of the earth, transported across immense 
rivers and amid the storms on the ocean, as if on a 
sacred pilgrimage ; of the thousand hopes that ac- 
companied them, the thousand ambitions that were 
founded upon them, the numberless ideas springing 
up from the comparison of them with other things, 
of new undertakings that will arise from these tri- 
umphs, of fabulous tales that will be repeated under 
the huts of the most distant colonies ; and finally 
that, thanks to all this, thousands of hands which 



A GLANCE AT THE EXPOSITION. IO/ 

would never have met, clasped each other ; that for 
a time many hatreds, as if in virtue of a truce from 
God, were quieted ; that millions of men, gathered 
here, will scatter all over the earth, carrying with 
them a rich treasure of beloved names, unknown 
before ; of new admiration, new sympathies, new 
hopes, and a grander and more powerful sen- 
timent still, that of the love of one's country. 
We think of these things, and applaud without doubt 
the Exhibition as the means of all this good ; but 
more than the Exhibition, we bless that august law, 
that holy and immortal strife, Labor. One would 
like to see it, symbolized as a deity, in an immense 
and superb statue, which should have its feet plant- 
ed in the bowels of the earth and its head higher 
than the mountains, and say to it, '' Glory to thee, 
second creator of the earth, formidable but tender 
lord ; we consecrate to thee the vigor of our youth, 
the tenacity of our manhood, the wisdom of old 
age, our enthusiasm, hope and blood ; thou shalt 
soften our sorrows, strengthen our affections, calm 
the soul, dispense fruitful rests, fraternize mankind 
and pacify the world, sublime friend and divine con- 
soler ! " 



.III. 

VICTOR HUGO. 

There is a writer in France who has attained 
such a degree of glory and power that no literary- 
ambition can ever dream of surpassing him. He is, 
by almost universal consent, the first living poet of 
Europe, and is nearly eighty years old, having been 
born in the second year of the century — Le siede 
avait deux ans. He was already celebrated fifty 
years ago, when Alexander Dumas said to his 
friends, in speaking of him : '^ Nous sommes tous 
flambe's ! " and he (Dumas) had only heard the 
drama entitled Marion Delorme. His name and 
works are scattered all over the world, and a hun- 
dred thousand copies of one of his new books dis- 
appear in a few days. His fifty volumes are as full 
of life and youth as if they had all seen light but a 
few years ago. The life of this man has been a con- 



VICTOR HUGO. 109 

tinual warfare — first, a literary conflict, he being 
banished from the theatres ; afterwards a political 
one, being defeated in the Assembly and persecuted 
in exile — the one was a war against classicality, the 
other against the Emperor, both of which were won 
by him. No other writer was more fought against, 
and no other, in his old age, sat upon a higher 
throne, raised upon the spoils of his enemies. Pha- 
lanxes of furious adversaries barfed his way in the 
streets ; he passed, and they disappeared. His 
great rivals descended one after the other before his 
eyes into the tomb. A series of tragical misfortunes 
scattered his family. All the branches of the oak 
fell, struck by lightning, one upon the other, but the 
old trunk remained firm and immovable. He passed 
through all kinds of trials, was poor, persecuted, pro- 
scribed, alone, a wanderer, vituperated and derided ; 
but he quietly continued his enormous work with a 
marvellous obstinacy. At times, when he appear- 
ed to be dead, he suddenly rose transfigured with 
works full of new power and new promise. He left 
the imprint of his gigantic steps upon all the roads 
of literature. He did not try, but assailed all the 
fields of art, and broke out of them raging, over- 



I IO STUDIES OF PARIS. 

throwing, destroying and leaving on every side the 
traces of a battle. At the tribunal, in the theatre, 
at home, in poetry and in criticism, in youth and in 
old age, he was always in a manner audacious, obsti- 
nate, unbridled, aggressive, rough, furious and sav- 
age. A legion of fanatical writers gathered, and 
still gather around him, fighting in his defence and 
in his name — a thousand choice intellects, at various 
times, shown with no other light than the reflections 
of his genius ; others attracted in his orbit, disap- 
peared in his bosom ; others strove furiously all their 
lives to efface from their foreheads the imprint that 
he had left there. Painting, sculpture and music 
took possession of the creatures of his imagination, 
and made them popular, for the second time, in all 
civilized countries. An immense wealth of fancies, 
sentences, metaphors, fashions and new forms of art, 
profusely scattered by him, live and flourish in all 
the different literatures of Europe. He has been 
for half a century the continual subject of warm and 
fruitful discussions. Almost all the new literary 
questions have foundation in his works, or circulate 
by force around them, and he presides, silent and 
invisible, at the contests. 



VICTOR HUGO. Ill 

Yet all these contests regarding him, in France, 
at least, have almost entirely ceased. His age, his 
fortunes, immense fame, and the powerful vitality 
of his works (invigorated by recent triumphs), the 
great popularity of his name, continually kept alive 
by his words and presence, have almost placed him 
above and beyond criticism. The most acrimonious 
of his literary enemies, of our time, have been 
silenced, and his most ferocious political adversaries 
assail the republican, but respect the poet, as a 
glory of France. He v/ho will not recognize him as 
a dramatic poet, acknowledges him as a novelist, 
and he who repulses him as a novelist adores him 
as a lyric poet. Others who detest his literary 
taste, accept his ideas ; those who combat his ideas 
are enthusiastic about his forms. He who does not 
admire any of his works, admires and exalts the 
imposing grandeur of them as a whole. No one 
contests his genius, and no one in speaking of it to 
strangers, appears indifferent or hostile to the 
homage which is rendered it, but, on the contrary, 
rather proud of it. Beside this, the political at- 
mosphere of the moment is favorable to him. He 
is a popular poet and a victorious tribune, wearing a 



112 



STUDIES OF PARIS. 



crown of laurel like the sacred aureola of the tutelar 
genius of his country. He has arrived at that de- 
gree of glory beyond which lies only Death. His 
house is like a palace. Writers and artists, of all 
countries, princes and working-men, women and 
youths wonderfully enthusiastic, go to visit him. 
Every one of his appearances in public is a triumph. 
His portrait is everywhere, and his name resounds 
at every topic. He is already spoken of as a glory 
consecrated for centuries, and is overwhelmed with 
those measureless and solemn eulogies which are 
only bestowed upon the dead. He is still full of 
life, force, ideas and designs, and announces at 
every moment the publication of some new work. 
Such is the man of whom I intend writing to-day — 
after the International Exhibition — Victor Hugo. 
Both subjects are, as it seems to me, equally inter- 
esting. 



n. 

I believe that in expressing what I think of 
Victor Hugo, I am reiterating very nearly the 
opinion of almost all the younger men of my age. 
There is no one among us, certainly, who does not 



VICTOR HUGO, 113 

remember the days, when he, a youth, devoured the 
first volumes of Hugo that fell into his hands. It 
was, without doubt, a new, profound, confused, and 
never-to-be-forgotten emotion for all. We have all 
asked ourselves from time to time, laying down our 
book. What kind of a man is this? Sweet and tre- 
mendous, fantastic and profound, insensate and 
sublime at the same time, he places beside a 
rhetorical figure which is revolting, the revelation of 
a great truth, eliciting an exclamation of surprise. 
With the same power he makes us feel the sweet- 
ness of a lover's kiss and the horror of a crime. He 
is ingenuous as a child, ferocious as a bloodthirsty 
man, affectionate as a woman, mystical as a prophet, 
violent as an orator of the convention, and sad as a 
man without affection and without hope. He 
knows how to express everything, the vague sensa- 
tions of infancy, over which we have tormented our 
minds a thousand times, the first inexplicable tor- 
ments of youthful love, the most secret struggles in 
the heart of a child, and the conscience of an 
assassin, secret depths of the soul, which we feel 
within us, but into which the eye of our mind had 
never penetrated, and outlines of feeling that we 



1 14 STUDIES IN PARIS. 

thought rebels to human language. He embraces 
the universe with his mind. 

He has, if I may so express myself, two souls, 
which sweep over two worlds at the same time, and 
every work of his bears the imprint of this double 
mind. Who has not made this observation a hun- 
dred times ? Above, there is his eternal " del bleu " 
which occurs at every page, the firmament traversed 
a thousand times, the planets continually invoked, 
the angels, the dawns, the oceans of light, a thou- 
sand dreams and visions of future life, — a world all 
ideal, into which he penetrates like one in ecstacy, 
transporting with him the dazzled and bewildered 
reader, shadows upon shadows, his eternal ombre, 
his abysses, gouffres, baths, sewers, courts of the 
miraculous, hangmen, toads, filth, deformity and 
poverty, everything in fact, which is most horrible 
and unnatural upon the earth. The field of his im- 
agination has no limit — Ravicinate, Casetta and Lu- 
crezia Borgia, Roland of the Legeride des Siécles, and 
Quasimodo, Dèa a?td Marie Tudor, his virgins dead 
at fifteen years of age, his galley slaves, his Sultans, 
his imperial guards, his beggars and his monks, in 
these you seem to have before you not the works 



VICTOR HUGO, 115 

of one man, but of a legion of poets. Run through 
all his creations — they leave the impression of an 
enormous epopèe of fragments, which extends from 
Cain to Napoleon the Great, and a confused mem- 
ory of divine loves, titanic struggles, unheard of 
poverty, and horrible deaths, seen through a terri- 
fying mist, broken here and there by floods of light, 
in which are swarming a myriad of personages half 
real and half ghostly, that confound the mind. All 
his works seem colored by the reflection of a hidden 
life that he has lived in other times, in a mysterious 
world, to which he seems to refer vaguely at every 
page, and at whose doors he continually appears, 
impatient of the limits that have been assigned to 
him on earth. An immense phantasmagoria of 
things unknown to humanity, appear to torment 
him continually, like a feverish vision. Everything 
that is strangest and most obscure on the bounda- 
ries which separate the real world from the world of 
dreams, he seeks and makes his own. The fabulous 
Kings of Asia, the superstitions of all centuries, 
the oldest legends of all countries, the gloomiest 
landscapes of the earth, the most horrible monsters 
of the sea, the most terrible phenomena of nature, 



Il6 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

the most tragical agonies, all the witchcraft, all the 
deliriums, and all the hallucinations of the human 
mind, have passed through his pen. He sees 
everything by, I do not know what marvellous 
prism ; through which the reader always sees 
him. At the back of all his scenes, and behind 
all his characters appears his proud and enormous 
head. Almost all his creations wear the colossal 
imprint of his seal, and speak the language of his 
genius ; they are, like him, great poets or great 
dreamers ; statues upon whose foreheads he has 
engraved his name ; masks with outlines more than 
human, which one sees enlarged tremendously, as if 
through the fogs of polar seas ; or illuminated by 
the light of a theatrical exhibition which transfigures 
them — like Javert^ Gymplame^ Triboulet, Simondain, 
Gilliaty Ursus, Quasimodo and Jean Valjean for in- 
stance, or his Napoleon Illy comically represented as 
a vulgar malefactor, alike in everything. There are 
very few personages of flesh and blood who resem- 
ble us common mortals. Thus his Cathedral of Notre 
Dame is converted by him into a monument, as enor- 
mous and formidable as a mountain in the Alps. 
All of his creations are, as he says, of the waves of 



^ 



VICTOR HUGO. I I 7 

a sea in a storm, Melangées de Montagne et de Songc. 
Only in the first moment of the conception, is he a 
quiet and faithful observer; then his invincible 
lyrical nature bursts forth, and he seizes his creation 
with a powerful hand, and carries it above the earth. 
From the first to the last page he is always present, 
a vain and violent despot, who makes the reading a 
struggle to us. 

He drives us forward with blows, excites, crushes, 
raises, shakes, humiliates and overturns us in his 
precipitous flight, without giving any sign of being 
aware of our existence. We balance rapidly between 
the most contradictory sentiments that reading can 
excite, from irritated ennui to ardent enthusiasm, as 
if we were balls in his hand. Eternally long pages 
follow each other, in which Hugo is no longer him- 
self. He misleads, wanders, groping in the darkness, 
and raves. We no longer hear the words of the man, 
but the mumbling and ravings of a madman. Enor- 
mous periods fall upon enormous periods, in ava- 
lanches dark and heavy, or little cuts upon little cuts, 
thick and raging like hailstones, while vacuity, ab- 
surdity, insane hyperbole and pedantry struggle with 
and crowd each other. Victor Hugo a pedant ? 



1 1 8 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

Yes, even this. When he explains to us a hundred 
times the idea which we seized at the first moment ; 
when he shows us slowly and obstinately, one by 
one, the different sides of a stone he believes to be 
a treasure, and which is in reality a false diamond. 
During that time, while we nod or tremble, the piti- 
less criticisms of critics, the anger of the classicists, 
the anathemas of the pedants, the derision of his 
numberless adversaries come to our mind, and we 
are ready to cry: They are right! But when we 
have reached the bottom of the page, there is a 
thought which makes us spring to our feet and ex- 
claim : No, they are wrong ! A sentence which 
fastens itself upon the brain and heart for a lifetime ; 
one sublime word that compensates us for all, and 
Hugo is there again, erect and gigantic, upon a pe- 
destal which was tottering. This is his great power ; 
the sudden leap, the unexpected word which startles 
us, the unforeseen flash which illumines the vast and 
unknown region, the door quickly opened and shut, 
through which we catch a glimpse of the prodigy ; 
*' tin grand coup dans la poitrine^' as Zola would say, 
which takes away one's breath for a moment, and 
leaves us frightened and exhausted. It is not the 



h 



VICTOR HUGO. 119 

eagle freeing himself on the wing ; it is the mass 
bursting from the volcano, touching the clouds and 
again falling. His art lies herein : a long and pa- 
tient labor, which prepares an unlooked for effect. 
He has no regard for us while arranging it, but 
wearies and provokes us ; is a disdainful and brutal 
workman, who notices neither our impatience nor 
our censure. His faults are as great as his genius ; 
not slight deformities, but colossal humpbacks, which 
make us distort our faces. The construction of the 
greater portion of his novels is grotesque. There 
are ridiculous episodes, brutal expedients, unlikeli- 
hoods boldly accumulated, threads of stories madly 
broken and reknotted, rambles, or rather furious 
races, whose aim one cannot see, and which present 
at every step a precipice. But he will lead us there 
whenever he wishes to, dragging us (resisting, stag- 
gering and breathless), trampling upon reason, good 
taste, good sense and truth, and at a certain point 
you turn away, crying : '* No, Hugo, I will not fol- 
low thee ! " leaving him to flee away alone. Where 
has he gone ? Has he fallen ? Ah ! there he is on 
the height, his forehead gilded by the sun. He has 
conquered, and he is right. But he has everything 



I20 



STUDIES OF PARIS. 



with which to fight and win — the audacity, strength 
and the arms, together with the genius and patience. 
He was born a poet, and has made himself one. 

He has opened within himself, with a pertinacious 
hand, the deepest vein of his treasures. Every one of 
his works is a laborious excavation, at which we assist 
in reading, while hearing the deep drawing of his 
breath. His art is indeed a strange thing. He does 
not present us with the finished work, the complete 
and ultimate result of his strength ; but makes us fol- 
low all the secret processes of his mind, makes us count 
and touch all the stones with which he intends erect- 
ing the building, witness all his fruitless attempts and 
all the successive falls of those portions badly con- 
structed, and then we see the edifice completed, but 
surrounded and laden with the rubbish which he 
disdains to sweep away. His work is a strange 
mixture of the patience of a worker in mosaic and 
the haste of an inspired painter. He writes as 
Goya painted. Now excavates — smooths, caresses 
his own work, slowly, almost sleepily, minutely and 
scrupulously ; he amuses himself by rolling out 
accurate catalogues of names and things, in explain- 
ing his own conceptions with interminable similes 



VICTOR HUGO. 121 

diligently conducted, or proceeds with the com- 
passes, seeks symmetry, discourses, corrects, adds, 
modifies, rectifies, blends, chisels and polishes. Sud- 
denly a great inspiration strikes him, and then he 
throws away the delicate brush, and like Goya, 
paints hastily with anything that falls into his hand, 
puts on the colors with a sponge, throws on great 
spots with the dish-cloth and the besom, and gives 
the touches of sentiment with furious dashes of the 
thumb which burst the canvas. His style is all fine 
chiselling, granite trimmings, points of iron and 
veins of gold, full of roughness and dark back- 
grounds, broken here and there into great gashes, 
through which one sees confused and distant pros- 
pects ; now simple to scholastic simplicity, now ar- 
ranged with the sapient art of a thinker ; at times 
limpid water, and seas in a storm upon which float 
roseate clouds that reflect the sun, or dark ones from 
which the lightning bursts. New and powerful 
imageries rise by myriads under his pen, and ideas 
spring around, winged and gleaming from his head, 
sometimes dimmed by the richness, and crushed by 
the weight of the armor. He does not spend, but 
lavishes with a free hand, and wastes the inexhausti- 



I 



122 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

ble treasures of his expressive power with the fury 
of a maddened gambler. His own language is not 
sufficient for him. He borrows the jargon of the 
common people, the rascally language of the galleys, 
the unformed and illogical stammering of children ; 
interlards his prose with the foreign words of a hun- 
dred nations, and with metaphors belonging to all 
literatures ; and constructs proudly a language of 
his own, all full of colors and brilliancy, full of 
enigmas and licences, powerful laconicisms and in- 
imitable delicacies, trivial, technical, academical, va- 
porous, brutal, or solemn according to need ; thus, af- 
ter reading his works it does not seem as if we had been 
hearing the language of one people or one century, 
but a vast and confused language of a future time, 
for which reason there is nothing inexplicable or 
strange about it. He takes advantage of the ex- 
pressive power, as he does of the courage of his 
genius, and thus entangles and envelopes himself in 
his own thought, and wanders therein as in a laby- 
rinth, without being able to find the exit. But even 
in his wanderings he is grand. Also in those 
labored, and abstruse pages, in which, wishing to 
explain the inexplicable, he tries on all sides his 




VICTOR HUGO 123 

own conceptions, and accumulates metaphors upon 
metaphors, comparisons upon comparisons, and re- 
curs fruitlessly to his mysterious language of light 
and shade, shadow and abyss of the unknown and un- 
fatJioinable; but all his strongest and richest language 
does not suffice to render even a faint idea of that 
monstrous and ruthless something which he has in 
mind. In those pages the cold pedants find with 
joy passages quite open to criticism which divides 
and destroys, but the soul of the artist feels the 
breath of the Titan who is struggling against a 
superhuman power, and witnesses those powerful 
efforts with a feeling of astonishment and respect, 
like one of those spectacles in which a man risks his 
life. It sometimes happens too, that in reading his 
works, upon reaching a certain point, the want of 
equal balance in the faculties, the continuous preva- 
lence of the unbridled fancy over reason, and the 
excessive frequency of the digressions and falls 
Aveary you, — the flashes of genius are no longer suf- 
ficient to compensate you for the continued sacri- 
fices you have to make to your good sense. You 
are satiated, indignant, sometimes nauseated ; you 
feel the need of resting after that torture, return 



1 24 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

with pleasure to your sensible, vigorous and always 
equal writers, and find yourself once more in the real 
world, blessing logic and regaining your dignity as 
a man and reader. You leave Victor Hugo in a 
corner for months, sometimes years, and it seems as 
if you were rid of him forever. Nonsense ! He is 
waiting for you. The day finally arrives, in which 
there comes an enthusiasm for which you wish an 
outlet, a sorrow that demands consolation, an in- 
stinctive need of the terrible and strange that forces 
you toward these books. Then all the still enthu- 
siasm awakes tumultuously. He seizes you again, 
subdues you. You are his, and relive in him for 
another period of your life. This is because the 
great outlines of his works are those of a genius. 
The abuse he makes of a sublime conception, offends 
you while reading ; but as soon as the scattered or 
excessive details have been forgotten, the concep- 
tion remains indellibly impressed upon your mind, 
and the more it becomes purified with time, the 
grander it seems, and the grander it becomes in 
truth. His great ideas and sentiments are so fine 
•that they overpower the minor defects of his art, as 
do the columns of an ancient temple the rubbish 



VICTOR HUGO. 125 

scattered at their base. And from this arises the 
strange fact that he has more ardent admirers of his 
creations than faithful readers of his works, and that 
many of his admirers only know him through frag- 
ments of his books, or the inspirations that the 
other arts have drawn therefrom. Who can forget 
Hernaniy Triboulety the bell-ringer of Notre Damey 
the love of Ruy Bias, or the desperation of Fantine ? 
And who can forget the shudders of terror which he 
has made run through our veins, or the tears he has 
drawn from our eyes ? He can do anything, is 
grand in tragedy and insuperable in the idyl. We 
have all heard Esmeralda s bones crushed on the 
bed of torture, and have been face to face with 
death, when he presents it in all its horrors as in 
that of Claude Frollo suspended from the cornice of 
the Cathedral, maddened, as on the barricades of Rue 
St. Denis, epic, as on the field of Waterloo, infinitely 
sad, as amid the snows of Russia, or solemnly lugu- 
brious, as in the shipwreck of the Comprachicos, And 
he is the same man who makes the most delicate 
cords of the soul vibrate with superhuman power ; 
the author of the Revenant, over which millions 
of mothers sob, the author of that celestial idyl of 



126 STUDIES OF PARIS, 

the Rue Plumet ; of the holy agony of Jean Valjean^ 
which rends the soul, and of those marvellous verses 
in which Triboulet expends in weeping the immeas- 
urable and humble tenderness of fatherly love. No 
— never have sweeter words, gentler prayers, more 
passionate cries of love or bursts of affection and 
generosity more noble and potent, issued from the 
heart of a poet. At such a time Victor Hugo is 
great, good, venerable, august, and there is no 
human soul who has not blessed and loved him in 
these pages. In solemn moments of life, beside a 
deathbed, during a great conflict of conscience, his 
verses pass through the mind like flashes of light- 
ning, and resound in the ear like wise and tender 
counsels, for he has felt, understood and said every- 
thing ; has expressed tremendous despair, and sub- 
lime resignation ; and there is no human sorrow to 
which he has not said a word of comfort ; nor a 
misfortune in the world over which he has not shed 
tears. He is the loving and terrible godfather of all 
kinds of misery, of the disowned ones of nature and 
those abandoned by the world, of those who have 
no bread, of those without country, liberty, hope, or 
light. This is his true and incontestable greatness. 



VICTOR HUGO. 127 

There is no other modem writer who has exercised 
vWth a greater number of works and with a more in- 
trepid obstinacy this glorious apostolate ; who has 
wielded a more powerful pencil in depicting misery, 
a sharper anatomical knife in laying open broken 
hearts, a more magic chisel in carving the heroes of 
misfortune, a hotter iron for stamping the foreheads 
of those whom he afflicts, or a more delicate hand 
in caressing the brows of those who are suffering. 
He is a great assaulter and a great defender ; has 
fought in all arenas, has climbed every summit and 
descended into every depth — and this is worthy of 
admiration in him, that no matter how low he has 
descended, he has never been abased. His hand 
has remained uncontaminated amid all the filth 
through which his pen has waded. He has never 
debased his art. He is austere and superb. He 
neither bends nor laughs. His smile is only a mask, 
behind which one catches a glimpse of his pale and 
knitted brow. A kind of fatal sadness pervades all 
his works. Even in his great and constant aspira- 
tions to virtue, concord, peace, and the redemption 
of the oppressed and unhappy, there is always 
something gloomy and melancholy, as if the element 



128 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

of hope were lacking. All his books end with a 
heartrending cry, and all the voices coming from his 
works form, reunited, a solemn lament, mingled with 
prayer and menace. His own belief in God, that 
which he calls the supreme certainty of his reason, 
is perhaps rather a powerful aspiration of his heart 
and an immense pasturage for his boundless imagi- 
nation, than a fixed faith, in which his soul reposes; 
Faith is a spring, necessary to him, of torrents of 
poetry, and God is a personage of his novels and 
songs. From any side in which we look at him, 
something strange and not clearly explicable ap- 
pears in him. The man is merged in the writer. 
You stretch out your hand to touch him, and 
instead of human flesh, you come in contact with an 
unknown substance, which perplexes you. His 
figure, veiled, rises, descends, approaches, withdraws, 
and never presents for any length of time precise 
and fixed outlines upon which you can immutably 
fasten your mind. And thus you weary yourself 
for years about his works without ever succeeding 
in forming an opinion of them, which you are not 
obliged to alter from time to time. They offer a 
thousand portions open to the criticisms of a child, 



VICTOR HUGO. 129 

and present a myriad of irresistible aspects for the 
admiration of mankind. You can find little fault 
with him who picks them mercilessly to pieces, yet 
do not entirely agree with him who is passionately 
enthusiastic about them. Destroy them with rea- 
soning — they rise again of themselves, little by 
little, in your mind, more majestic and firmer than 
before. Be disposed, on the contrary, to adore them 
blindly, and you will find yourself obliged at every 
moment to stifle the thousand voices of protest 
which issue from your heart and reason. Only one 
thing is incontestable, and it is that you cannot re- 
fuse this man the august and solemn title of Genius. 
His most pronounced adversary feels at the bottom 
of his heart that the mere word intellect does not 
suffice for him. You may prefer to him a thousand 
other geniuses ; yet you are forced to recognize the 
fact that his head towers above all the others of that 
legion. And it is difficult to believe that repugnance 
to his character, disparity of taste and ideas, or par- 
tial dislikes, can have so much power over a man as 
to make him deny the greatness, which the creations, 
struggles, triumphs, errors and undertakings of this 
old man, form together. For my part, I think, of 



130 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

his fifty volumes, full of inspirations and fatiguing 
labor, in which he reveals with over-powering genius 
an indomitable will and a physique of iron. I 
think of the torrents of life that have issued from 
his breast, of the intense love he displays, the mild 
anger and implacable hatred which he provoked 
and which reigned in his heart ; I recall his life 
from the time he played, a boy, under the eyes of 
his mother in the garden of the Feuillantines ; I see 
him at sixteen, when he wrote in fifteen days (to 
gain a wager) the burning pages of Bug Jargal-, and 
think of the time when he bought the first shawl for 
his wife with the money of Han cf Island ; I picture 
him to myself, as proud and impassible amid the ap- 
plause of the assemblies, called forth by his temerous 
words. I see him humbly serving the forty poor 
children seated around his table at Haute ville-House. 
I fancy him grave and sad, amid the crowd, before 
the hundred illustrious tombs over which he uttered 
those words full of majesty and sweetness. I see 
him in the streets of Paris in the midst of that 
reverent multitude, dismayed and full of years, fol- 
lowing the biers of his sons ; then too, in those fever- 
ish night watches, which he describes so powerfully, 



VICTOR HUGO. 131 

when in the distance and solemn stillness of the 
night, he heard the blast of Silva's horn, and the 
echo of Gennaro's cry ; I see him take part at the 
Theatre Frangais, fifty years after its first represen- 
tation, in the noisy triumph of Hernani^ saluted by the 
first writers and artists of France, as their re-elected 
and re-anointed prince, and think of his superb 
Orient^ his tremendous Middle Ages, Priere pour 
tons, of the infanta who loses the rose while Phillip 
the Second loses the Armada, of the charge of the 
Cuirassiers of the guards against the column of Wel- 
ington, of the little shoe of Esmeralda, the agony of 
Eponine, and of all the creatures of the mysterious 
and gleaming world which issue from his brain ; of 
his exile, his misfortunes, his "jj years ; and I feel a 
hand that makes me bow my head in reverent 
admiration. 

Ill 

Victor Hugo is certainly one of those authors 
who inspire in one a most ardent desire to see him, 
because his varied characteristics as a writer, give 
rise to the query as to which one of them his ap- 
pearance as a man corresponds. Is it to the Hugo 



132 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

who terrifies us, or to the, one that makes us weep? 
So we find it difficult to imagine him as benevo- 
lent and bloodthirsty at the same time. I remem- 
ber passing many hours as a youth, in a shady 
garden, with one of his works in my hand, trying to 
picture him in my imagination, drawing and redraw- 
ing his face and form a hundred times, without ever 
succeeding in producing a portrait that thoroughly 
satisfied me. His image in indistinct outlines was 
always before me, but the man himself was a myth. 
I could not account for the feeling with which he in- 
spired me. Sometimes, it seemed to me, that if I 
should see him, I should run to greet him like a son ; 
at others, I felt that in meeting him suddenly (over- 
come by a feeling of diffidence and terror) I should 
get out of his way, and say in an undertone to my 
companions, " Stand aside, Hugo is passing by !" He 
was the man who had driven me with my heart full 
of tenderness into my mother's arms, but he was also 
the man who had made me spring up in bed many 
times in the middle of the night, startled by the 
sudden apparition of the five coffins of Lucrezia 
Borgia. T felt for him an affection full of trepidation 
and suspicion, but the desire to see him was intense 



VICTOR HUGO. 133 

and went on increasing with years. How great is 
the power of genius. ! 

You arrive in an enormous city, and pass from 
amusement to amusement, emotion to emotion, 
among an immense and noisy populace, people from 
every country, masterpieces of the arts and in- 
dustries of the whole world, and amid a thousand 
spectacles, grandeurs, and seductions. All this is, 
however, only a secondary consideration to you. 
Between you and that tremendous spectacle arises 
the image of a man whom you have never seen, 
whom you will perhaps never see, who is not even 
aware of your existence, and that image occupies all 
your mind and heart. In that ocean of heads you 
seek for his alone. Every time an old man passes, 
who reminds you of him, in the distance, a voice 
within you cries out. It is he ! and you become 
excited. The great city talks to you of nothing but 
that man. The towers of the cathedrals are peopled 
by the images of his brain. At every turning of 
the streets you meet some creature of his imagina- 
tion, the theatre fronts remind you of his triumphs, 
the trees in the gardens whisper his verses and the 
waters of the Seine seem to you to murmur his 



134 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

name. Then you make a heroic resolution, demand 
a favor, long contemplated, of a friend. And no 
one can imagine the effect produced upon you by 
these words : '' Rue de Clichy, No. 20." 

There is one thing, however, which makes many 
of the admirers of Victor Hugo who desire to visit 
him hesitate from doing so, and this is, that he is 
accused of being remarkably vain, — certain it is, 
that he thinks a great deal of himself, and does not 
conceal the fact. Everyone knows what he said, 
when he was quite young, to the actress Mars, who 
took the liberty of criticizing his verses at the 
rehearsal of Hernani : " Madamoiselle, you forget 
with whom you are dealing. You have great talent ; 
I do not deny it, but / have great talent also, and 
deserve some regard ! " I leave to others the answer 
to this question : whether, in some cases, an im- 
mense amount of self-conceit is not an element of 
genius — that which gives the impulse to those 
enormous undertakings ; and whether, admitting the 
artistic character of Victor Hugo, it is possible to 
imagine a modest Victor Hugo. I confine myself 



VICTOR HUGO. 135 

to the consideration of the fact. Yes, Victor Hugo 
ought to be tremendously proud. He, for example, 
(a noted fact) does not admit criticism. " Genius," 
he says, '^ is a block. You must accept it entire, or 
reject it entire." The work of Genius is a temple 
which you must enter with bowed head and in 
silence. " On ne chicane pas le genie.'' Admire, be 
thankful and be silent. Genius has no defects. Its 
defects are only the wrong side of its different 
qualities. That is all. He has proclaimed this 
clearly in his work on Shakespeare, in which he has 
used the English tragic poet in order to tell the 
world what he thinks of himself. The portrait he 
draws of Shakespeare is his own ; that deification 
that he makes of genius, which, for a man who be- 
lieves in God, is almost sacrilegious, is, in fact, his 
apotheosis ; in that ocean to which he compares 
great poets, you see his own greatness reflected 
before all others; that mountain which has every 
kind of climate and every sort of vegetation, is 
Victor Hugo. In those lists that he makes at every 
page, of the geniuses of all times and countries from 
Job to Voltaire, one understands, could swear 
in fact, that, when he has reached the last name, 



1 36 STUDIES IN PARIS. 

he was on the point of adding his own, but re- 
frained from doing so, not on account of his 
modesty, but out of respect for the Convenances, 
He treats all these great people as his equals. All 
geniuses on the other hand, (this is one of his ideas) 
are equal. The region of geniuses is the region of 
equality. He speaks of Dante as of a brother. 
But beside these there are a thousand instances of 
the consciousness he feels of his own greatness. The 
magnificent boldness with which he attacks science 
and with which he faces, in passing, all the highest 
problems of philosophy ; the courage with which he 
displays his literary licenses, as if he were certain 
that, stamped by him, they would become current 
coin and a common riches ; the solemn intonation 
of his prefaces, which announces the work as a social 
event ; the scrupulous care with which he gathers, or 
has gathered, all the most insignificant words and ac- 
tions of his life. When he wishes to play the modest 
man, he produces the opposite effect, so inexpert is 
he in that art, and so accustomed is he to pass the 
boundaries of everything. As when he begins 
a letter, for instance: ''^An Obscure Workman,'' and 
thus, under the enforced quiet with which he replies 



VICTOR HUGO. 137 

to observations of Lamartine about " Les Misera- 
bles," one can hear the smothered roar of the 
wounded lion. The prodigality of his praises be, 
trays the man who feels that he is casting them from 
such a height, that he need not fear the pride which 
may arise from them, even if it become measureless. 
Then he freely shows his own soul. Upon one oc- 
casion in which he would not allow one of his 
dramas to be represented because some one else had 
treated the same subject, he said : " I do not wish 
to be compared with any one," and to an editor who 
proposed publishing a selection of his poems, he 
replied ; " You seem to me like a man, who, showing 
in one hand some stones gathered from Mont Blanc, 
really think that you can say to people, ^This is Mont 
Blanc' " He believes himself to be above all com- 
parison with any cotemporaneous writer ; and takes 
no part in fact in that continuous warfare which 
moves the writers of France to witty and malicious 
sayings which scathe without drawing forth a cry, 
and go the rounds of Paris. He stands on one side, 
perfectly silent, and on the other hand would not be 
adapted for this kind of conflict. It is said that this 
is the case because he is not witty. He has replied 



138 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

most tartly to the criticism. " To say that a man of 
genius has no wit, is a great consolation for the 
many witty men who have no genius." Yet, the 
criticism is just, perhaps, although we find in his 
parlimentary speeches admirable examples of repartee 
to unexpected thrusts. His jokes have frequently 
the stamp of great genius ; but do not provoke the 
salted and peppered laugh of true French wit. The 
delicate stiletto of irony flies from his hand like 
something colossal ; he is only capable of giving 
great blows of the club which crush the helmet and 
head. And then he holds himself almost above 
literature. He regards himself almost in the light 
of a priest of all people, who has survived, by some 
decree of Providence, a thousand trials and mis- 
fortunes in order to watch over humanity. This 
appears quite clearly in his aprostrophies to the 
people, in his warnings to monarchs, in the tone 
of prophecy which he gives to his presentments, 
in the form of response that he gives to his sen- 
tences, in the character of menace that he throws into 
his reproofs, in all his language broken into haughty 
affirmations and absolute opinions, as if every one of 
his propositions were a decree to be engraved on 



VICTOR HUGO. 139 

bronze or marble for future generations. All these 
things, whether known before or simply heard said, 
make any stranger who intends visiting him, hesitate 
for some time before doing so. Certain it is, that 
after the first hesitation, one indulges in encourag- 
ing reflections — thinking, for example, that the 
feeling which keeps us from presenting ourselves 
before a proud man whom we admire, is at the bot- 
tom, only a feeling of pride. Then one reflects how 
many miserable writers, wretched and powerless 
pedants and unknown village scribblers, think no less 
of themselves than Victor Hugo. And, in fine, we 
say to ourselves that ours is a presumptions mania, 
which makes us feel, that put in his place, we should 
not be elated by the glory of being the first poet in 
Europe. Then one takes courage. Yet it is a thing 
that is rather alarming, the idea of presenting our- 
selves unknown there without any excuse but the 
impulse of the heart, before a famous man, in the 
city which fetes him, in his house amid a crowd of 
admirers — to tell him * ^ * * what ? "I 
wished to see you." 

V. 
Nevertheless, one morning I found myself, almost 



HO STUDIES OF PARIS. 

unconsciously, in the courtyard of No. 20 Rue de 
Clichy, opposite the window of the porter's lodge, 
and heard with a kind of astonishment, as if some 
one else were speaking, my own voice saying : 
" Does Victor Hugo live here ?" I was perfectly 
certain that he lived there ; yet I was rather sur- 
prised to hear the reply : — '' Yes, sir, on the second 
floor," in a most indifferent tone. It seemed to me 
very strange that the fact of Victor Hugo's living 
there should be so natural to the porter. Then, 
suddenly, it struck me as most absurd that I should 
go to present myself to that man in such a manner, 
and I said aloud to myself — " You certainly are a 
fool," remaining quite absorbed for some mo- 
ments in the contemplation of a cat which was 
sleeping in a window on the ground floor — and 
shall I confess it? I felt a slight tremor in my knees 
as if my breakfast hour had been passed for some 
time. I know that I recovered myself and began 
climbing the stairs, but with the firm conviction 
that as soon as I reached the door I should turn 
away without ringing the bell. I mounted slowly ; 
on one stair I felt the courage of a lion, on another 
I was seized with the temptation to turn my back 



VICTOR HUGO. 141 

and run off like a thief. I stopped two or three 
times to wipe my forehead, moist with perspiration. 
Oh, never has any Alpine climber made a more 
fatiguing ascent than that one ! I should like to 
have turned back, but could not. What was the 
matter? There were five hundred De Amicis, of 
every size, who filled the stairs behind me, crowded 
and packed between the wall and the banisters like 
anchovies, who all said to me in a low voice — Go on ! 
Suddenly, as if up to that time I had been thinking 
of something quite different, I found myself stand- 
ing at the foot of the last flight of stairs, opposite 
the door. Then, I don't know how, all fears 
vanished. I felt a powerful impulse that was given 
me by a thousand combined recollections of child- 
hood and youth, my blood rushed to my heart, 
Cosette murmured : " Courage ! " — Hernani said : 
" Proceed ! " — Genaro cried : "■ Ring ! " and I pulled 
the bell. Ye heavenly powers ! It seemed to me 
as if I could hear the continuous ringing of the great 
bell of Notre Dame, and I stood there trembling as 
if that sound were to set all Paris in commotion. 
Finally, at the same moment I felt the sensation of 
a dagger in my breast and saw the door open. 



142 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

I found myself facing a maid— a beautiful womau 
dressed with taste. In a corner of the anti-chamber 
two servants were polishing silver candlesticks. 
Through an open door one could see in another 
room a half-cleared table, with a newspaper in the 
centre of it. Insignificant but never-to-be-forgotten 
trifles ! I asked the girl, in a weak tenor voice, if 
Victor Hugo lived there. She, too, replied, " Yes," 
with an indifference which greatly astonished me. 
I then asked if he could receive me ; she answered 
that he was still in his room. I stood there, quite 
confused, without saying a w^ord ; but the woman 
must have been accustomed to seeing young men 
present themselves in this way, with a look of em- 
barrassment, at her master's door, and to divining 
from the face the feeling which excited them, 
because she gave me a glance half smiling and half 
pitiful, as much as to say — " Oh, I understand ; you 
are one of the many," — and then added in a bene- 
volent tone of voice : " I think, however, that he is 
awake, and can ask him when he will receive you ; " 
so, without giving me time to reply, she disappeared. 
It seemed to me as if I were dreaming or intoxi- 
cated. The feeling of reality left me entirely. I 



VICTOR HUGO. 143 

asked myself if the Victor Hugo who was in the 
adjoining room v/ere really that Victor Hugo for 
whom I was looking, and it did not seem as if it 
were possible. In fact I could have wished that it 
were not possible. It struck me that I had done an in- 
sensate thing. What have I done ? I said to myself. 
My brain must have become addled. What will 
happen next? And thinking that it was possible he 
did not wish to receive me, I felt the blood mount- 
ing to my head. Suddenly the maiden reappeared, 
and said politely : " Monsieur, Victor Hugo will 
receive you with pleasure this evening at half-past 
nine o'clock." 

Oh adorable creature ! I must go back twenty 
years, when, having waited motionless three hours 
before a door, for a word which was to give me 
three months of liberty and pleasure or three 
months of slavery and humiliation, the secretary 
of the commission finally appeared, and said to 
me solemnly, Promoted ! I must go back to one 
of those days in order to say that I have felt at 
another time such a delicious expansion of the 
lungs, such thorough satisfaction, such a mad de- 
sire to go down the staircase five steps at a time. 



144 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

which thou hast made me experience, with those 
fourteen blessed words, Oh maid of my soul ! 

VI. 
From half past nine o'clock in the morning until 
half past nine o'clock at night I was king of France. 
Oh ! Victor Hugo vain, Victor Hugo communist, 
Victor Hugo demoniacal, Victor Hugo crazy. 
What nonsense ! All these Victor Hugos of criti- 
cism, calumny, with fringed cap, or with the horn of 
Satanic pride, had disappeared from my mind. For 
me there was now but one Victor Hugo, the great 
amorous and disdainful poet, full of strong counsels 
and holy consolations — the man who had made me 
rave with love as a youth ; who had made me think 
and struggle as a man ; the poet whose fulminating 
verses had sounded in my heart on the battle-field 
like the exciting cry of a distant general ; the writer 
who had a thousand times crushed my miserable 
pride as a poor scribbler, making me feel an inde- 
scribable, bitter, and salutary voluptuousness in 
humiliation, which quieted my soul ; the author, in 
speaking of whom, the warm and ready phrase 
which had captivated my sympathies, burst a thou- 



VICTOR HUGO, 145 

sand times from my agitated heart ; the artist who 
had aided me in expressing a thousand different 
sentiments, and in rendering the image of a thousand 
things which, without his assistance, would have re- 
mained buried forever in my soul ; the writer some 
of whose thoughts or pictures recurred to my 
memory every moment, illuminating, commenting 
upon, or giving form to my emotions, when in Spain, 
Greece, on the Rhine, Bosphorus, or on the ocean ; 
the poet of children, the consoler of disconsolate 
mothers, the singer of glorious deaths, the great 
painter of skies and oceans ; object of twenty years' 
study, of curiosity, and subject of discussion ; a 
thousand times abandoned, a thousand times re- 
sumed, defended over and over again ; galley slave 
of beautiful loves, patron of ardent friendships, 
companion of feverish nightwatches, and inciter of 
outbursts of desperate weeping ; the man, in fact, in 
whom I had lived a great portion of the most beau- 
tiful part of my life ; who had transfused into my 
blood his genius, and from whose works I had formed 
my brains, nerves and bones — this was the Victor 
Hugo whom I had seen before me, and at every 
hour that passed it seemed to me as if his figure 



14^ STUDIES OF PARIS. 

grew a foot higher and that my heart became a yeaf 
younger. 

VII. 

Yet, here is a problem for the searchers of the 
human heart. Toward evening, an hour before 
starting out, suddenly, something like mortal silence 
took possession of me. I felt myself suddenly quite 
empty, dry, and cold. It seemed to me that, ap- 
pearing before Victor Hugo, I should not have felt 
the slightest shock, nor have found a word to say — 
and I was astonished at it. For the reason, in fact, 
that there is but one profound and visible emotion 
which justifies the audacity of such a visit. When 
that emotion is lacking, it looks as if one had gone 
there from curiosity, and mere curiosity, in such 
cases, is impudence. What causes this sudden 
speechlessness of the heart ? Perchance the heart 
falls asleep, weary with emotion, in order to regain 
fresh strength. I do not know, but can only affirm, 
that it was useless to try and arouse myself and re- 
call to mind all the thoughts and feelings of the 
morning; every effort was in vain ; no matter how 
hard I struggled I could not succeed in awakening 



VICTOR HUGO, 147 

one spark ; and I ascended the staircase with an 
indifference that astonished me. Am I stupefied? 
I asked myself, or am I ill ? Now, what shall I 
say? I was devoured by rage, and could have 
gnawed my fingers and beaten my head. I remem- 
ber that • I was still in this state when the door 
opened, and I found myself in the anteroom lighted 
by a lamp hung from the ceiling. This was, fortu- 
nately, the last moment. The housekeeper asked 
my name in order to announce it ; the sound of 
which, as pronounced by me, and repeated by her, 
in that room, aroused me as if some one had called 
me ; my mind became clear and a flood of life rushed 
to my heart. 

The woman opened a door and disappeared. 
Through the half-open door came a confused 
sound of gay and loud voices, from which I 
could understand that supper was just at an end. 
Among all those voices I caught the words, 
La philosophie Indienne, I had scarcely time to 
think — Oh gods ! what shall I say if I am attacked 
on the subject of Indian philosophy ? The door 
closed again. It seemed as if a profound silence 
followed. The housekeeper was doing her errand. 



148 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

The moments were like quarters of an hour. That 
silence was terrible to me. Finally, the woman re- 
appeared, beckoned me to follow her, looking at me 
curiously as if my face had something strange in it ; 
led me through a hallway, quietly pushed open a 
folding-door and said in a low voice : " Enter, Mon- 
sieur — Monsieur Victor Hugo is there ! " I stood 
for a moment motionless. I felt far from well. If 
the maid had looked me in the face she would have 
offered me a glass of water. 

" Courage! " I said to myself, as I raised the cur- 
tain, and taking a step forward, found myself face 
to face with Victor Hugo. 

He was standing alone and motionless. 

What should I say to him? At eighteen, on such 
occasions, one sheds tears. Weeping is the grand 
and lovely eloquence of early youth. But at thirty 
one no longer weeps. At thirty one conquers 
emotion without stifling it, and speaks. The en- 
thusiasm overflows, proud of itself, in burning and 
manly words, the forehead is raised, the eye gleams, 
the voice vibrates, and the soul expands. Of what 
I said I have no idea. Some one whispered rapidly 
in my ears, impulsive words, which I repeated in a 



VICTOR HUGO. 149 

trembling and sonorous voice, experiencing a tre- 
mendous sweetness in my heart, and seeing before 
me, confusedly, a white head that seemed enormous, 
and two eyes fastened upon mine, which assumed 
little by little an expression of curiosity and benevo- 
lence. Suddenly I stopped, as if a hand had seized 
me by the throat — and I was breathless. 

Then my admiration of twenty years, the con- 
stancy of my ardent desire, my inquietude in days 
past, my trepidation all that day, my childish terror, 
my youthful nightwatches, fevers as a man, and my 
humiliation as a writer had their great recompense. 

The hand that wrote Notre Dame and La Legende 
des Sie'cles grasped my own. 

And instantly thereafter I experienced a second 
feeling sweeter perhaps than the first. 

The left hand of the great poet joined the right 
one, and my hand, warm and trembling, rested for 
some moments between his. 

A brief silence followed, during which I heard the 
sound of my breathing, as if I had run a race. 
Then I heard his voice : a grave but sweet voice, in 
which I seemed to hear a thousand voices, and 
which astonished me, as if. in hearinc: it, I saw 



ISO STUDIES OF PARIS. 

Victor Hugo appear before me a second time. 

'' Welcome to my house, Monsieur," he said. 
" You have heart. You are a friend, and have done 
well in coming to present yourself in this way. I 
thank you with all my heart. You will not leave 
me immediately — will you ? You will remain with 
me the whole evening — will you not ? " Then he 
asked, " From what country are you ? " 

Hearing that I was Italian, he looked at me fixedly, 
then took my hand again, made me sit down, seat- 
ing himself also. 

What could one say to him ? — Great heavens ! — 
To such a man, when you have expressed with all 
your soul what you feel for him, standing there, in 
the first impulse of enthusiasm, you have told him 
everything. Nothing remains but to ask him ques- 
tions. Yet what can you make him say that he has 
not already written ? You have known for years all 
his most secret thoughts ; every question seems an 
idle one, and then, when one has scarcely courage 
enough to reply, one cannot assuredly have sufficient 
to interrogate. So I remained silent. On the other 
hand, what could he say to me — he ? Nevertheless, 
in order to relieve my embarrassment, he asked me 



VICTOR HUGO. 151 

several questions about my impressions of Paris, the 
Exposition, Italy, — questions which, instead of put- 
ting me at my ease, would have disconcerted me 
more than ever if I had not discovered that, like a 
clever observer of mankind, he was noticing far 
more the lively emotion that was displayed in my 
uncertain voice, monosyllabic replies, and fixed 
glance that devoured him, than the sense of what I 
was saying to him. He looked at me with a certain 
air of affection, raising his eyebrows, half closing his 
eyes to increase the power of his glance, and smiling 
slightly, as if he were pleased with the effect he Avas 
producing upon me, and were saying to me in his 
heart : "■ Look at me, satisfy your desire, poor fel- 
low, because I read it in your face and you seem to 
me like a good and sincere sort of creature ! " 

And I did observe him, in fact, in those few 
moments ; but I could not see him well until later, 
because the light was not falling upon his face. 

He is of medium height, slightly bent, and strong- 
limbed, has a large but well-formed head, immense 
forehead, a bull-shaped neck, broad shoulders, short, 
fat hands, and a reddish skin which shows good 
health and strength. His whole person has some- 



152 



STUDIES OF PARIS. 



thing powerful and athletic about it, like his genius. 
He has thick and bristling hair, full, short beard, all 
very white, the eyes are long and narrow, a little 
oblique like those of a fawn — which gives to his face 
a rather strange expression. Whether they be blue 
or black, I do not remember. They are most bright 
and mobile eyes, which seem half closed, and ap- 
pear like two gleaming points, that, when they 
fasten themselves upon you, penetrate to the depths 
of your soul. He wore an Orleans jacket of black, 
and his customary dark waistcoat buttoned up to 
his chin. The impression he produced upon me 
was of a man who is habitually sad. 

" Now, we will remain a little while together," 
he said to me, after having asked some other ques- 
tions, " and then you shall go with me into the 
drawing-room, where you will meet some of the 
most noted men of France. What city do you re- 
side in in Italy?" I gave my answer hurriedly, and 
at the same moment was seized by a great fear lest 
he should ask my profession — and I felt myself 
grow crimson to the roots of my hair. 

Fortunately for me, while he was opening his 
mouth to question me some people entered. Then 



1 



VICTOR HUGO. 153 

I witnessed a scene, or rather a series of scenes, half 
pleasing, half touching, which gave me an idea of what 
Victor Hugo's day must be, and compensated me for 
not having been able to continue our téte-à-téte. 
A gentleman advanced, and after him, at short 
Intervals, many others, of different ages, who saw 
Victor Hugo for the first time, and had asked by 
letter that same day, as far as I could judge, for the 
interview. One came to ask permission to reprint 
one of his poems ; another to beg an explanation 
about the alteration of a scene in a drama ; a third, 
to demand the permission of dedicating a work to 
him ; a fourth, a young Belgian, with a long scar 
across his face, found himself just in my position, 
and came, full of emotion, for no other purpose than 
that of seeing Victor Hugo. I do not remember 
the others. Well, I had the satisfaction of noticing 
that, young and old. Frenchmen and foreigners, pre- 
sented themselves In nearly the same state In which 
I found myself at the moment of crossing the sill. 
All their faces expressed a lively emotion, and all, 
more or less, uttered their words with much diffi- 
culty. I admired greatly the gentleness of Victor 
Hugo's manners. He went forward to meet every- 



154 



STUDIES OF PARIS. 



one, extending his hand in the most cordial and 
simple manner, but, naturally, could not remember 
the name of anyone. He feigned, however, to do 
so. " I remember very well," he said, " without 
doubt." " You are very amiable. Monsieur." He 
made them all seat themselves and listened to one 
after the other of those confused and stammering 
speeches, giving assent from time to time by a 
motion of his head. I never saw him smile. He 
seemed tired. " But certainly," he said at last, 
'' you shall have what you desire." ** Can I be of 
any service to you in anything else?" he said, speak- 
ing to the one who had come about changing the 
scene. This surprised me. It was, if I am not 
mistaken, about a scene in Le Roi S'Aimise. He 
remembered it line by line, and recited quickly at 
least ten of them in order to recall one which had 
at first escaped him. His prodigious memory re- 
veals itself in the immense richness of his language 
and the innumerable quotations in his works. At 
last the timid young Belgian came forward, twisting 
with both hands the rim of his high hat, and said in 
a voice full of emotion, fixing two moist blue eyes 
upon Victor Hugo : '' Monsieur! I came to Paris to 



VICTOR HUGO. 



155 



see you. I am from Bruges. I did not have the 
courage to present myself before, so my father 
wrote : ' Go, Victor Hugo is great and good, and he 
will not refuse to receive thee.' Then I wrote you. 
I thank you. I would have been content to see you 
pass in the street. I owe you one of the most 
beautiful days in my whole life, Monsieur!" He 
said these few words with a simplicity and grace 
that are indescribable. Victor Hugo made some 
sort of a reply — I do not know what — placing his 
hand affectionately upon the shoulder of the young 
fellow, whose face was beaming. All the others, 
standing by, were silent. Then Victor Hugo looked 
at us all, one after the other ; all kept their eyes 
fastened upon him, no one breathed. He seemed a 
trifle embarrassed and smiled ; and it was for a few 
moments a silent scene, but full of life and poetry, 
the memory of which I shall always retain, and I 
shall feel its beauty forever. After this several 
present took their leave, and Victor Hugo made the 
others go into the neighboring salon, pressing the 
hands of each one as they passed before him. 

This second drawing-room was full of people, for 
the greater part friends of the house. It was a salon 



156 STUDIES OF PARIS, 

of medium size, rather low, papered in red, and 
elegantly furnished, but without ostentation. On 
one side were four sofas placed in a semi-circle, a 
little way apart, around a marble chimney place ; 
on the mantel-piece there was a mirror, but no pic- 
tures adorned the walls. The house, taking every- 
thing into consideration, did not strike me as being 
that of a millionaire poet. There was, however, in 
the decoration a predominance of dark red and 
blood-red which harmonized with the genius of its 
master. 

The people scattered through the room formed 
quite a curious picture. The first one who at- 
tracted me, from the strange contrast he formed 
to the other figures in the picture, (like certain 
queer words in a beautiful page of Hugo) was a 
mulatto of colossal stature, in dress-coat and white 
cravat, who was turning the leaves of an album. 
1 beg his pardon, but I must tell the truth, which is, 
that at first sight I thought of that Homére-Hogu^ 
negre, who stands out so picturesquely in the list 
of names of the band of Patron-Minette, in the 
Miserables. I was afterwards told that he was a 
collaborator of the Petite Presse^ full of talent and 



VICTOR HUGO, 1 57 

very much esteemed. In a corner there was a group 
of young men who were busily talking together and 
gaily laughing, with handsome foreheads, bright 
eyes, poetic styles of wearing tile hair in the posed 
attitudes of correct actors, from which I argued that 
they were the so-called Parnassiens, poets of art for 
art, or rather of verses for verses, who have for their 
leader De Lisle, and form a band of pages in the 
court of Victor Hugo. Then a poet of that family 
— Catullus Mendes — whose sympathetic and expres- 
sive face, with long hair à la Nazarene was pointed 
out to me. On another side was a circle of mature 
men, almost all tall, among whom were several 
beautiful gray heads, with striking profiles, in which 
I seemed to recognize that particular imprint of 
austerity and sadness which the diversities of po- 
litical life appear to leave, and which reminds one 
of the meditative pride of old sea-captains. There 
were only two ladies, seated near the fireplace, one 
who has escaped entirely from my memory, and 
another who impressed me particularly: a woman 
strongly built, with very white hair, large, open face, 
lighted by two deep eyes ; taciturn — one of Velas- 
quez ladies without the ruff. It was Madamoiselle 



158 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

Drouet, the powerful actress, who represented Lu- 
crezia Borgia for the first time, in 1833, ^-t the theatre 
of Porte Saint-Martin, where, as every one knows, 
that terrible drama, written in six weeks, had a most 
marvellous success. There were other personages, 
who seemed to be strangers, and who had that air of 
embarrassment peculiar to those who find them- 
selves for the first time in an illustrious house. 

Almost all were talking, but when Victor Hugo 
entered every one was silent. 

He seated himself near the fireplace, on a sofa, 
and the others formed a great semi-circle around 
him. 

Then I could see and hear him well. 

By some means, I do not know how, the conver- 
sation fell on the literary congress. Victor Hugo, 
on being questioned, gave some of the ideas which 
he intended introducing into his inaugural address. 
Then, I saw to my surprise, that what I had heard 
about his mode of talking in private was quite true. 
I expected to hear the antitheses, great metaphors, 
the paradoxical and witty form and the imperative 
intonation which are found in his writings, especially 
those of these latter years. But there was nothing 



VICTOR HUGO. 1 59 

of the kind, and it is difficult to imagine simpler 
language, more modest tones, a more natural manner 
of putting forth one's opinion than that which he 
used in that conversation. In order to escape the 
air of speaking ex Cathedra^ he talked in a low voice, 
looking into one face only : "■ Here is what I should 
say," he observed ; "■ what I think I shall be able 
to say ; tell me if you think it to the point/' He 
did not gesticulate at all, but held his hands on his 
knees. Only from time to time he would rub his 
forehead with one finger, a movement quite natural 
to him. It is said that also in discussing literature, 
in most restricted circles and touching the most im- 
portant questions, he talks with the same simplicity. 
From which we must naturally conclude that, when 
writing, in the exaltation of his imagination his 
nature almost changes, or that he purposely speaks 
that other language because he thinks it more 
elevated and more efficacious. 

While he was talking all listened most attentively. 
I was struck by the tone, more than respectful, almost 
timid, in fact, with which he was addressed even by 
those who seemed his familiars. No one asked him a 
question without saying : ** Mon Maitre,'' — -" Mo7i cher 



l6o STUDIES OF PARIS. 

Maitre'' One said : " Grand Maitre T I never be- 
fore saw any celebrated writer surrounded by a circle 
of admirers, which resembled, as that one did, the 
court of a monarch. It is my duty to add, however, 
that I never saw upon his face even one look that ex- 
pressed a vain complacency in the admiration which 
surrounded him. It is true, on the other hand, that 
he has been accustomed to it for fifty years. 

A great light shone fully on his face, and I could 
not look at him enough, so strange it seemed to me. 

Victor Hugo's face is one that puzzles me. It 
has two physiognomies. When it is serious, it is 
very serious — almost gloomy ; and seems not only 
like a face that has never laughed, but one that can- 
not do so, — and his eyes look at people with an 
expression of inquietude. One feels like saying to 
him: "■ Hugo, do me the favor to look the other 
way ! " They are the eyes of a stern judge, or of a 
duellist stronger than you, who wishes to fascinate 
you by his glance. At such moments put on 
him, in thought, a white turban : he becomes an old 
sheik — replace this with a helmet : he is an old 
soldier — place on his head a crown, and he is a vin- 
dictive and inexorable king. He has something of 



VICTOR HUGO. I6l 

the austerity of a priest, and the gloom of a 
magician. He has a lion-like face. When he opens 
his mouth, it seems as if a roar must be heard, and 
when he raises his strong fist, it seems as if he could 
not let it down without crushing something. At 
such times one can read on his face the history of 
all his struggles, sufferings, the iron-like tenacity of 
his nature, the gloomy sympathies of his fancy, his 
convicts, coffins, spectres, rages, and hatreds ; all the 
Ombre^ or as he would say, the dark side of his 
works. But suddenly, as I happened to see that 
evening, while some one was telling a funny anec- 
dote of one of the cabmen of Paris, he burst out into 
a laugh so fresh and gay, showing all his superb 
white teeth, and in that laugh his eyes and mouth 
assumed such a youthful and ingenuous expression, 
that one could no longer recognize the original man, 
and was quite as astonished as if a mask had fallen 
from his face and presented to his view the true 
Victor Hugo for the first time. At these moments 
you see, as through a crevice, behind him, Déru- 
chette, Guillormand, Mademoiselle Lise, Don Caesar 
de Bazan, Gavroche, his angels, his del bleu, and all 
his soft and luminous world. Yet these are only rare 



102 STUDIES OF PARIS, 

flashes on his face, as in his books, after which it 
resumes its usual gloomy, pensive expression, as \i 
he were meditating the catastrophe of one of his 
sanguinary dramas. The more you look at him, the 
less you can believe that he is that same Hugo of a 
half century ago, thin, pale and gentle, to whom the 
publishers and directors of the theatre, who went 
to see the author of Hernani, at his own home, 
said, " Please do us the favor of calling your father,'* 

While Victor Hugo was talking in a low voice 
with one of his neighbors, I began a conversation 
with a gentleman near me — a man in the fifties, hav- 
ing a handsome and artistic physiognomy — who, 
after a few words, said to me that he was a friend of 
Victor Hugo's, and that he sometimes wrote letters 
in his name. 

Among other things I spoke to him of the emo- 
tion I had felt that morning in mounting the 
staircase. 

*• But why?" he asked, pleasantly. Victor 
Hugo is so amiable, affable with all ! He has 
the heart of a girl and the ways of a child. 
All that is bitter and terrible in his books has issued 
from his great imagination, and not from his heart. 



VICTOR HUGO, 163 

Do you not see the sweetness in his face ? Look at 
him ! '* 

I did so ; but just at that moment it was so dark 
and frowning that I would not have dared meet his 
eye. 

" It is true," I replied. 

Then he spoke to me of his habits. 
* He has the simplest habits in the world," he 
said. *' Have you never met him on the roof of the 
omnibus of Rue Clichy? From time to time he 
makes the rounds of Paris in the omnibus that 
passes through his street, particularly when he 
is obhged to write. Finding himself thus in the 
midst of the people, seeing again so many places 
full of memories for him, contemplating Paris on 
the wing, from the height, in the fresh air of the 
morning, inspires him." 

At that moment, I caught one of Victor Hugo's 
phrases, which impressed me. '* Lacademie,'' he 
said ; '' qui est pleine de bonté pour mot, / " and I re- 
membered I had heard that, on receiving him at the 
Academy (I do not know on what occasion), all 
the academicians, (a very rare thing,) rose to their 
feet. 



IÒ4 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

My neighbor continued : 

" Pie works every day, is always working. From 
the morning, when he rises, until four o'clock in the 
afternoon, he is at his table. His brain is always in 
activity. Creation for him is a necessity, — and even 
when he does not feel inspired, he works, as he says, 
" to keep his hand iny The day is not sufficiently 
long to enable him to put on paper all that fills his 
head and heart. But the good Lord will give him a 
long life and he will give us twenty volumes more." 
On hearing these words I could not refrain from 
gazing at that marvellous old man as I would at 
a creature from another world, and from thinking 
that he was working, at that age, with a vigor 
I had never possessed, and that he worked in this 
way twenty-five years before I was born. — I was 
annihilated. 

Meanwhile, Victor Hugo was talking of the many 
little occupations that often carried off his day 
almost before he was aware of it, and he said good- 
humoredly, but in a tired tone : 

" jfe 11 ai pas une minute à nioi, vons le voyez bien^ 
And all replied in one voice : *' It is true ! " 
Then one after another bc^ran relating jokes, for 



VICTOR HUGO. 165 

the express purpose of amusing him, I suppose ; but 
they rarely succeeded ia doing so. 

From time to time his eye wandered around, and 
fastened itself upon the young Belgian and upon 
me, as if he were only aware, at that moment, of our 
presence, and in order to remove this suspicion from 
our minds he would smile quickly and benevolently, 
as much as to say : " I do not forget you." Then 
his habitual sadness would descend upon his face 
like a visor. 

Meanwhile, I was waiting for the opportunity to 
say something to him. Ah ! then I did not lack for 
something to say. Courage had come to me, and a 
thousand questions crowded into my mind. I would 
have given a year of my life to be alone with him 
for an hour, to seize him by the hand and to say 
boldly to him, looking him full in the face : " To 
tell the truth, Hugo, I want to read thee thorough- 
ly. What dost thou feel in thy blood when thou 
writest? What dost thou see around thee in the 
air? What voices dost thou hear speaking in thine 
ear when thou art creating? What doest thou in 
thy room when one of those grand ideas, which 
make the tour of the world, gleam in thy brain, and. 



1 66 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

when one of those verses that strike the heart like 
blow of a dagger or the cry of an angel falls from 
thy pen ? Where hast thou known thy Rose of the 
Vieille Chanson du Printemps, which made me sigh 
for a year ? From whence came that frightful Ma- 
zeppa, whose flight I continually see ? Where didst 
thou find Quasimodo ? Reveal to me, then, one of 
thy thousand secrets. Speak to me of Fatima, of 
the Petit Roi de Calice ; tell me something of the 
Marquis of Lantenac. Explain to me how the spec- 
tre which inspired thee with that pitiless shower of 
blood on the head of the parricide Kanut, or that 
horrible eye of fire which followed Cain, appeared 
to thee. Tell me in what part of the inferno didst 
thou discover the love of the priest Claude, and in 
what portion of heaven hast thou seen the white 
face of Dea ! Talk to me of thy infancy, the first 
recollections of thy genius, of the time when Cha- 
teaubriand called thee a sublime child ; tell me of 
thy stormy night-watches, if thou criest when the 
images which startle one appear to thee ; tell me if 
thou weepest when writing the words that draw 
forth sobs ; describe to me thy tortures, intoxica- 
tions, thy furies ; tell me what thou thinkest and 



VICTOR HUGO. 167 

what thou art, mysterious and tremendous old 



man 



And thinking over these things, I began searching 
for some significant phrase with which to begin 
the conversation, in case the occasion should present 
itself. 

Fortune favored me. Victor Hugo left the room 
for a moment, then returned to the fireplace and 
seated himself beside me. The general conversa- 
tion had broken into many individual ones. No 
moment could have been more opportune. A hun- 
dred interrogations rushed to the end of my tongue, 
and I commenced boldly: " Monsieur?" 

Victor Hugo turned courteously, placed one hand 
on my knee, and looked at me attentively. 

What could you expect ? There are misfortunes 
which might happen to all. Do you remember the 
lettered tailor of the Promessi Sposi^ who, after hav- 
ing studied a thousand charming things to say to 
the Cardinal which would do him honor, could think 
of nothing else to say when the moment arrived 
than "Just imagine!" which ruined him for life? 
Well, I regret to say, and tell it in order to punish 
myself I cut the same figure as that tailor ; in fact, 



1 68 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

rather a sadder one. The fixed gaze of Victor Hugo 
confused me, all my beautiful ideas took flight, and 
I had nothing to say but this * * 

Well, I must confess it — 

/ asked him if he had been to see the Exposition ! 

And I was overwhelmed by my question. I no 
longer remember what Victor Hugo replied. I only 
recollect that, some moments after, in speaking of 
the Exposition, he said : " Cest un beau joit-Jou" 

*^ Mais cest immense^ saves vous^ mon maitre^' some 
one remarked. 

And he replied smilingly, " Cest un immense jou^ 
jou^ 

The words really seemed to come from the dark 
depths of my humiliation, and I did not dare open 
my mouth again. Victor Hugo, after a short time, 
changed his place, the separate conversations be- 
came general, and my opportunity was lost. Victor 
Hugo began talking again, and I, half clos- 
ing my eyes and looking up toward the ceiling, in 
order to be alone with my thoughts, began going 
over the emotions for which 1 was indebted to that 
man, accompanying my meditations with the sweet 
and solemn sound of his voice. I thought of the 



VICTOR HUGO. 169 

times I had secretly read Notre Dame behind the 
school benches, of the time I had kissed the volume' 
of the Contemplations under an arbor of jessamines; 
in the garden of my paternal home ; of the verses 
which I used to declaim under my tent at night in 
the midst of the silence of the encampment ; of the 
heart-beats that I experienced the first time a litho- 
graph of him fell under my. eyes ; of the immense 
distance that I felt between him and my desire to 
know him in the little provincial city where I had 
read his first book ; of a day when, still a boy, I had 
made my father laugh by asking him, " If Victor 
Hugo should suddenly appear while we were at 
table, what would you do ? " And all these distant 
recollections evoked there, near by him, filled me 
with emotions, and I said to myself, '' Now I have 
met him, know him, am in his own house ; the voice 
to which I listen is his ; he is here only a step away. 
Is it really true ? " and opening my eyes, I exclaim- 
ed : " Here he is, my dear and terrible Victor Hugo. 
By Heavens, it is not an empty dream ! " 

While I was abandoning myself to these thoughts 
I suddenly heard every one rising and taking their 
leave. I, too, approached Victor Hugo, took his 



1/0 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

right hand in both of mine, and was unable to utter 
a single word. 

But he looked at me and comprehended all. Then 
he said, as he pressed my hand and gave me a smil- 
ing but rather sorrowful look : 

"Adieu, dear sir." 

Then added: " Not adieu; au revoir, is it not?" 

I do not know, but I believe I was foolish enough 
to reply, ^^ Au revoir'' 

I left the room much moved and happy, with a 
slight feeling of melancholy, and so bewildered that 
I stumbled against a chair in making my exit. 

VIII. 

This is the impression Victor Hugo made upon 
me in his own house. But I should not have seen 
him thoroughly had I not seen him in public, upon 
one of those occasions, on which, whatever they 
may be, his presence is the spectacle looked forward 
to with the most curiosity. I saw him in the theatre 
of the Ckdtelet, when he, as president, delivered his 
address, at the inauguration of the Literary Con- 
gress. An hour before he appeared, the theatre 
was densely crowded. The parquet well filled with 



VICTOR HUGO, 171 

writers and artists of every country, among whom 
were exchanged looks of curiosity, signs and inter- 
rogations, each knowing in that assemblage many 
names and few faces, and all being desirous on that 
fine occasion of recognizing all their own acquaint- 
ances. There was a general movement of old heads 
and young ones, of beautiful eyes full of thought, of 
faces that approached each other and smiled, of 
black heads that bowed before white ones, of hands 
that sought and pressed each other ; one heard all 
languages spoken, and a thrill of. life that gladdened 
all ran along on every side. Upon the immense 
and brilliantly lighted stage were the delegates of all 
nations, from Sweden to Italy, and from the Repub- 
lic of San Salvador to Russia. A great staff of 
poets, novelists, savants, statesmen, publicists, and 
publishers, among whom were seen the fair and 
smiling face of Turgénieff, the beautiful, bold head 
of Edmond About, and the sympathetic counten- 
ance of Jules Simon, the target for many glances. 
Yet the great curiosity was to see Victor Hugo. 
There were hundreds of strangers who had never 
seen him, his name was upon all lips, and every 
eye was turned toward that portion of the stage 



1/2 



STUDIES OF PARIS. 



at which he was to appear. At every movement 
among the scenes, there followed a great bustle 
throughout the theatre. It was a beautiful and con- 
soling sight to witness the intense curiosity in that 
large multitude so varied in character and blood, 
and to think that he who aroused it was an old 
poet. Suddenly, all the delegates rose to their feet ; 
among all those gray and white heads appeared one 
that was whiter than all the rest, and a tremendous 
burst of applause broke out — one of those outbursts 
which should wake in him who receives it, a feeling 
almost of terror, and which, resounding in the soul 
of him who applauds, increases the sentiment to 
which he has given expression. It was one tremen- 
dous, tempestuous, unending applause, that made 
the theatre tremble. Across Victor Hugo's face 
passed one flash of light, one flash only, but it 
revealed his whole soul. Instantly thereafter his 
countenance resumed its habitual expression of 
gravity. He approached the front of the stage with 
uncertain step, surrounded by his illustrious cortege, 
stood at one side of a table, and began reading his 
address, written in enormous characters upon im- 
mense sheets of paper. It was not one of his hap- 



VICTOR HUGO. 1/3 

piest efforts, but this is not the place to criticise 
it. He read slowly, in a loud voice, enunciating 
distinctly every phrase, word and syllable. His 
voice is still vigorous and sonorous, although in long 
sentences it grew a trifle weak, and at times he 
uttered sharp, shrill sounds. There were stupendous 
moments when he said : ** You are the ambassadors 
of the Human Mind, in this great Paris. You are 
welcome ; France salutes you ! " He said these last 
words in a tone full of nobility and with a broad, 
sweeping gesture that touched the assemblage. 
When he said : " Hoimiics du passed prencz-en voire 
partly iioiis lie vans craignons pas ! " and say- 
ing this he shook and raised his powerful head 
like a lion, and fixed his fulminating eyes on the 
end of the hall with a defiant and menacing look ; 
remaining some moments immovable, his face suf- 
fused, in the midst of a profound silence ; he was 
really beautiful and terrible, like a Canto of his 
Chatimcnts, and a shudder ran through the parquet. 
Then his address, up to that point so full of deep 
rage, softened at the subject of amnesty, and then 
the tone of his voice changed and seemed like that 
of another, and those noble words: "All festivals 



174 



STUDIES OF PARIS. 



are fraternal ; a festival is not a festival if we do not 
forgive some one," which he uttered with an inex- 
pressibly gentle accent of pity and prayer that sent 
through the crowd a thrill of consent, more eloquent, 
a hundred times, than mere applause. And finally, 
reading this sentence : '' There is a thing greater 
than any triumph, and it is the spectacle of the 
country which opens its arms, and the banished man 
who appears upon the horizon ! He gave em- 
phasis to this thought by a solemn motion of the 
hand, and with a sweet, sad look that called forth a 
storm of applause and cries. He was followed by 
other speakers, who ended their speeches with a 
reverent salute to the great master, but he gave no 
sign of emotion. Only from time to time his face 
would brighten, but instantly become clouded again, 
as if the obstinate and implacable thought which 
had left him a moment before had once more taken 
possession of him. 

When the last address was finished, he rose and 
began to move away. Then burst out a final ap- 
plause, heartier, noisier and more persistent than 
at first, accompanied by shouts of enthusiasm, 
which compelled him to stop. It was not an ap- 



VICTOR HUGO. 175 

plause for the address; it was applause for the 
Orientales and the Legende ; it was a tribute of 
gratitude to the poet of great affections, a salute 
to the old wrestler, a good wish to the septuagen- 
arian, and a farewell to the man whom many would 
never see again. He replied by one long look, 
then disappeared. 

IX. 

Such is Victor Hugo as I saw him at the height 
of his glory. Will the future generations see him 
at the same height? The majority doubt it. But 
time can do no more than bury him ; his colossal 
frame will remain as erect as an enormous leafless 
tree on the horizon of the literary history of the 
century, and legions of geniuses will fly with the 
feathers which have fallen from his wings. He is 
one of the powerful writers who present themselves 
to posterity, bleeding, dishevelled and breathless, 
bearing on their own coat-of-arms the titles of their 
works like the names of battles won, of glorious 
disasters or sublime follies, and posterity salutes 
them with reverence, as it would do wounded ath- 
letes. He will certainly be admired as one of the 



176 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

strongest literary phenomena of his time, and one 
of the most marvellous examples of the strength 
and boldness of human genius. '' II est bonj' as he 
himself would say, ^^ que Von trouve sur les sommets 
ces grands examples d'audace^ He has shown the 
height to which genius can climb, and has illumi- 
nated the precipices in which genius meets with ruin. 
He has made millions of human beings think and 
feel for half a century. If nothing else remained of 
him, his immense popularity among all peo^Dle, like 
a consoling example of the echo which the words of 
a man (who has no other strength than words) may 
find in humanity, would still remain. But he will 
stand safe and proud on the solitary summit, and 
the more the literature of his country and of all 
Europe shall sink into scepticism, sensuality and de- 
cay, the higher and more noble will his figure ap- 
pear in the distance. The day of the great worker 
is not yet at an end. It seems as if he were passing 
through some sad period at present. God grant that 
he may emerge from it, and that we may still hear 
for many years to come his powerful voice which 
moved our fathers in their youth. It will say some- 
thing grand and true to us up to the last moment 



VICTOR HUGO. 177 

We have heard it as children ; we wish to hear it 
again " when the tree shall give back to earth its 
withered leaves." We express to him this hope : 
That the great poet, who sprang up with the dawn 
of the nineteenth century^ may accompany the cen- 
tury to its end ; that his genius may shine as long as 
his heart shall beat, and that Europe may gather to- 
gether with the last breath of his centennial life the 
last canto of his immortal epopèe. 



IV. 

EMILE ZOLA. 

I. 

Once in a railway carriage, I saw a Frenchman 
who was reading a book very attentively, show, from 
time to time signs of surprise. Suddenly, while I 
was trying to discover the title on the cover, he 
exclaimed: "Oh! that's disgusting!" and put the 
volume into his valise in the most contemptuous 
manner. He remained for some moments lost in 
thought, then reopened the valise, took up the book 
again and began reading. He may have finished a 
couple of pages, when he suddenly burst out into 
a hearty laugh, and turning to his companion, said : 
** Ah ! my dear friend, here is the most marvellous 
description of a wedding dinner!" Then continued 
his reading, showing plainly that he was enjoying 
it intensely. The book was rAssommoir, and 
that which happened to the Frenchman in perusing 

178 



EMILE ZOLA. 1/9 

it occurs to all who take up for the first time the 
novels of Zola. You must conquer the first feeling 
of repugnance; then, whatever be the final judg- 
ment pronounced upon the writer, you are glad you 
have read his works, and you arrive at the conclusion 
that you ought to have done so. The first effect 
produced, particularly after the perusal of other 
works, is like that of one coming out of a close and 
heated theatre, who feels the first whiff of fresh air 
in his face with a keen sense of pleasure, even if it 
bring with it an odor not altogether agreeable. After 
reading his romances it seems as if in all others, even 
in the truest, there were a veil between the reader 
and the things, and that there exists to our minds 
the same difference as between the representations 
of human faces on canvass and the reflections 
of the sam^e faces in a mirror. It is like finding 
truth for the first time. Certain it is, that no 
matter how strong you are, or whether you have 
le ncz solide^ like Gcrvaise at the hospital, some 
times you spring back as if from a sudden whiff 
of foul air. But even at these points, as at almost 
every page, though in the act of protesting violently 
"This is too much !" — there is a devil in us which 



1 80 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

laughs and frolics and enjoys itself hugely at our 
discomfiture. You feel the same pleasure that 
you would have in hearing a very blunt man talk, 
even if he were brutal ; a man who expresses, as 
Othello says, his worst ideas in his worst language, 
who describes what he sees, repeats what he hears, 
says what he thinks, and tells what he is, w^ithout any 
regard for any one's feelings, and just as if he were 
talking to himself — à la bonne heiire ! From the very 
first lines you know with whom you are dealing. 
The delicate persons retire — that is an understood 
matter; he does not conceal or embellish anything, 
either sentiments, thoughts, conversations, acts, or 
places. He will be a judicious romancer, surgeon, 
casuist, physiologist, and an expert chancellor of the 
exchequer, who will raise every veil, putting his 
hands into every thing and calling everything coolly 
by its name, not heeding, but rather being greatly 
surprised at your astonishment. In the moral order, 
he unveils in his characters those deepest feelings, 
which are generally profound secrets, and are trem- 
blingly whispered through the window of the con- 
fessional. In the material order, he makes us per- 
ceive every odor, every flavor and every contact. 



EM ILE ZOLA. l8l 

In language, he scargely refrains from those few un- 
pronounceable words, which wicked boys stealthily 
seek in the dictionary. No one has ever gone further 
in this extreme, and you really do not know whether 
you ought to admire most his talent or his courage. 
Among the myriads of characters in novels whom we 
remember, his remain crowded on one side, and are 
the largest and most tangible of all. We have not 
only seen them pass and heard them talk, but have 
jostled against them, felt their breath and perceived 
the odor of their flesh and garments. We have seen 
the blood circulating under their skins ; know in what 
positions they sleep, what they eat, how they dress 
and undress ; we understand the difference between 
their temperaments and ours, the most secret appe- 
tites, the most passionate anger of their language ; 
their gestures, grimaces, the spots on their linen, the 
dirt in their nails, etc. And, like the characters, he 
imprints upon our minds the places, because he 
looks at everything with the keen glance, which em- 
braces all, and which nothing escapes. In a room 
already drawn and painted, the light is moved, and 
he interrupts the story to tell us where it glides, 
upon what it breaks in the new direction, the ray 



1 82 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

of the flamCy and how the legs of a chair and the 
hinges of a door gleam in a dark corner. From the 
description of a shop, he makes us understand that 
it has just struck twelve, or lacks nearly an hour 
of sunset. He notes all the shadows, all the spots on 
the sun ; all the shades of color which succeed each 
other from hour to hour upon the wall, and pre- 
sents everything with such a marvellous distinctness 
thai five years after reading, we remember the ap- 
pearance the upholstery presented about five o'clock 
in the evening when the curtains had been drawn, 
and the effect the appearance produced upon the 
mind of a person who was seated in the corner of 
that particular room. He never forgets anything, 
and gives life to everything, and there is nothing 
before which his omnipotent pencil stops, neither 
soiled linen, the appearance of drunken men, dirty 
flesh, or decayed bodies. He makes us leave the 
perfumed boudoir of Renée with a headache, and 
remain for an hour at a workman's shop, in the 
society of the pretty Elise, among pigs' heads bur- 
ied in jelly, boxes of sardines floating in oil, blood- 
red hams, larded veal, and patties of hares' liver, de- 
picted, or rather presented, in such a natural manner 



EM ILE ZOLA, I83 

that when you have finished reading you leave the 
book and go involuntarily in search of water to wash 
your hands. So also, the perfume about Nanna's 
shoulders, the odor of fish in the clothes of the 
beautiful Normandese, the smell of Boit sans Soif's 
breath, and the mouldy odor of Lantiers trunk ; he 
makes us perceive everything, by opening our nos- 
trils with the holder of his pen ; and describes the 
Park of Paradou, flower by flower, the market of St. 
Eustace, fish by fish, the shop of Madame Lec(Kur^ 
cheese by cheese, and the dinner of Gervaise, 
mouthful by mouthful. In the sam_e manner he 
proceeds in regard to the occupations of his char- 
acters in which we take part, explaining them most 
minutely, no matter what may be their nature, so 
that one learns from his novels, as from a receipt- 
book, the practices of arts and modes ; how to iron 
shirts, do the work of an ironmonger, carve chickens, 
perform Mass and lead a square dance. 

Among all these things, in all these places, the 
air of which we breathe, and in which we see and 
touch everything, moves a varied crowd of women, 
corrupt to the marrow, foul-mouthed shop-keepers, 
cunning bankers, knavish priests, prostitutes, dan- 



1 84 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

dies, ruffians and filth of every kind and shape, 
(among which appears sometimes, like a rara avis^ 
a good man), and between them all they do a little 
of everything, from the crime of incest, (circulating 
between the penal code and the hospital, and the 
pawn shops and tavern), through all the passions 
and brutish tastes, sunk in the mire up to the chin, 
in a thick and heavy atmosphere, hardly freshened 
from time to time by the breath of a lovely affec- 
tion, and stirred alternately by plebian sickness and 
the heartrendering cries of the famished and dy- 
ing. Yet despite this, he is a moral writer, one can 
affirm this resolutely — EmileZola is one of the most 
moral novelists of France, and it is really astonish- 
ing that any one can doubt this. He makes us per- 
ceive the smell of vice, not the perfume ; his nude 
figures are those of the anatomical table, which do 
not inspire the slightest immoral thought ; there is 
not one of his books, not even the crudest, that does 
not leave in the soul pure, firm, and immutable, the 
aversion or scorn for the base passions of which he 
treats. He is not, like Dumas fils, bound by an in- 
conquerable sympathy to his hideous women, to 
whom he says " Infamous creatures !" in a loud 



EM I LE ZOLA. 1 8$ 

voice, and " Dear ones ! " just above his breath. 
Brutally, pitilessly, and without hypocrisy he ex- 
poses vice, nude, and holds it up to ridicule, stand- 
ing so far off from it that he does not graze it 
with his garments. Forced by his hand, it is Vice 
itself that says " Detest me and pass by ! " His 
novels, he himself says, are really " moral in action." 
The scandal which comes from them is only for the 
eyes and ears. And as he holds back, as a man, 
from the mire mixed by his pen, so completely does 
he, as a writer, keep aloof from the characters which 
he has created. 

There is, perhaps, no other modern author who -/ 
conceals himself more skilfully in his works. After 
reading all his novels one can not understand who 
or what he is. He is a profound observer, a power- 
ful painter, and a wonderful writer. Strong, without 
respect for mankind, brusque, resolute, bold, rather 
ill-humored, and little given to benevolence, but you 
know nothing more of him. Only that, although 
you do not see his entire face through the pages of 
his books, you catch a glimpse, however, of his fore- 
head stamped by a straight and deep furrow, and 
you fancy that he must have seen, at no great dis- 



1 86 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

tance, a large portion of the misery and vice which 
he describes. And he seems a man, who, having 
been offended by the world, revenges himself by 
tearing from her her mask and showing her for the 
first time as she really is — for the most part odious 
and disgusting. A thorough conviction guides and 
strengthens him ; that he ought to speak and de- 
scribe the truth at any risk or any cost, just as it is, 
boldly, entirely, and without any concealment. He 
also has, as victor Hugo says of Shakespeare, ^^ une 
sorte de parti pr is gigantesque^'' To this part that 
he has taken he consequently adapts his art, which 
becomes rather a reproduction than a creation, and 
is, in fact, a quiet, patient, methodical art, not send- 
ing out great flashes but illuminating every thing 
with an equal light on all sides. He is courageous 
but circumspect in his efforts ; always sure of his 
facts ; rises little, but never falls, and proceeds with 
a slow step, but in a direct road toward a goal which 
he sees clearly before him. His novels are hardly 
romances. They have no framework nor scarcely a 
vertebral column. Try to relate one ; it is impossible. 
They are composed of an immense number of de- 
tails, which generally escape you after the persual, 



EMILE ZOLA. 1 87 

like the thousand little pictures without any subject 
in a Dutch Museum ; and for this reason you re-read 
them with pleasure. You expect some great fact 
from page to page ; it flies before you, but you never 
overtake it. You are never struck by any great 
attempt at effect, interest, or character, which keeps 
your mind in suspense, and on which a novel gener- 
ally depends. There are no high points, from which 
you overlook an enormous space ; it is a continuous 
plain on which you walk with bowed head, deviating 
from your course every moment, and stopping at 
each step to look at stones, insects, foot tracks or the 
weeds. His characters scarcely act, and the greater 
portion of them are not necessary to whatever action 
is developed in the novel. They are not people 
who play the comedy; but those intent upon their 
own affairs, taken suddenly by a photographer, 
without being aware of it. In every novel there are 
some months or years in the life of every one. You\x^ 
see each one living on his own account, and each 
one interests you principally for himself, little or 
not at all for the part he takes in the affairs of the 
others. From this arises the great power of Zola. 
No matter how defective his novel be in construe- 



1 88 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

tion, it makes up for it in truth. You do not see . 
therein the hand of the novehst who chooses the 
facts, arranges them in order to connect them, and 
conceals them behind each other intending to sur- 
prise us, and who prepares a great effect with a 
thousand Httle sacrifices to probability and reason. 
The narration goes on of itself, so that no other way 
seems possible, and it appears to be a simple ex- 
planation of truth, not only as regards the charac- 
ters, but also the nature of the facts and the order 
in which they are presented. You read, and seem 
to be standing at a window, watching a thousand 
little incidents of street life. For this reason almost 
all the novelists, when compared with him, give 
rather the appearance of dice players. And not 
having the habit common to all writers of romance, 
of knotting and unknotting many threads and draw- 
ing them from different points to a common centre, 
he is free to bestow all his attention on the real end, 
which is to represent truth, and is thus enabled to 
attain by this means, a very high degree of power. 
He has not, on the other hand, very varied facul- 
ties, and feels this, and so sharpens and strengthens 
admirably all those he possesses to supply the lack 



EMILE ZOLA, 1 89 

of others. And it is doubtful whether this defect is 
really to be deplored, as perha^ a more vivid 
imagination might have diminished his strength on 
another side, taking away a portion of his power 
of description and analysis. Gifted on the con- 
trary, as he is, he conceives a novel in such a way 
that his conception and aim do not interfere in the 
slightest degree with the freedom of his work ; 
interested in a scene or dialogue he buries himself 
in it, and works with all his might, having forgotten 
apparently all about the novel. The dialogue pro- 
ceeds without any aim, the scene develops without 
any restraint ; for this reason both are perfectly 
natural. Sometimes he gathers, in flying along, a 
thousand nothings; the cart which is passing, the 
cloud that hides the sun, the Avind moving the cur- 
tain, the reflection of a looking-glass, a distant noise, 
and the reader himself at that moment, forgetting 
everything else, lives with the writer and in that 
place, experiencing a most pleasing illusion, which 
leaves nothing to be desired. 

With this power of bringing the most trifling 
thing into bold relief, and working, as he does, 
methodically and patiently, he becomes insuperable 



1 90 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

in the art of gradations, and in the exposition of 
a series of most delicate transitions, of the slow 
and complete transformation of a character, or the 
state or condition of a thing, so that the reader is 
carried on with him, without being aware of the 
fact, so slowly that he experiences a feeling of pro- 
found surprise when he reaches the end, and dis- 
covers, on turning back, that he has gone over a 
great deal of ground. The power of several of his 
novels consists almost entirely in this art ; for they 
are, as it were, woven, and are a fine tissue of little 
episodes formed of broken dialogues and life-like de- 
scriptions, in which every word has a color and a fla- 
vor, every blow makes its mark and in every instance 
there is, so to express oneself, the writer himself. It 
is very rare that you feel a strong or sudden emotion 
in his novels. The sublime and distressing scene of 
'"'■Monsieur, Ecoiitez donc^' of Gervaise, when she, 
dying of hunger, offers herself to the passers by, and 
again, that where she is eating and weeping under the 
eyes of Goicjet, are almost unique in his romances. 
Nearly always, in reading, you experience a series 
of pleasurable sensations, of little shocks and sur- 
prises which leave the mind uncertain, here a laugh, 



EMILE ZOLA. I9I 

there a shudder of repugnance, a little impatience, 
a sense of astonishment at a description wonderfully 
life-like, a spasm of the heart for a human sore torn 
ruthlessly open, and a slight feeling of amazement 
continuing from the first page to the last, as at the 
revolution of a series of stereoscopic views of an 
unknown country. They are novels that emit an 
odor and flavor in sips, like glasses of liqueur, and 
which leave the breath strong and the palate insens- 
ible to sweets. To this his style contributes largely, 
so solid and always connected with the thought, 
so full of ingenious artifices, cunningly concealed 
under a certain uniform gait, governed by the writ- 
er, stupendously imitative of motions and sounds, 
resolute and harmonious, which seems to be accom- 
panied by the measured blow of an iron hand 
upon the table, and in which you hear the deep, full 
breath of a powerful youth. Strength in fact, is ' 
the preeminent gift of Zola, and any one wishing 
to describe him, must say in the first place : He is 
powerful ! Every one of his novels is " un grand 
tour de forced' an enormous weight which he raises 
to and from the ground, doing all that in him lies 
to conceal the effort. After reading the last page, 



192 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

one must exclaim, " Ah, what a hand ; " like those 
three sots in the ^'- LAssommoir^' about the Marquis, 
who had thrown three porters to the ground by 
blows of the head in their stomachs. And the 
sudden appearance of this novelist in his shirl 
sleeves, with his hairy chest and rough voice, who 
in the most impudent manner, and in the open 
street, says everything to everybody, in the midst 
of a crowd of novelties in black suits, well educated 
and smiling, who say a thousand obscene things in. 
a decent form in those little romances, couleur de 
rosey which are written for boudoirs and the stages 
is in truth an event in literature. 

Here is his greatest merit. He has flung into the 
air with one kick, all the toilet articles of literature, 
and has washed with a dish cloth of gray linen the 
bedizened face of Truth. He has written the 
first popular novel which bears really the " odor of 
the people," has attacked almost all social classes, 
lashing until he draws blood, the intense niggard- 
liness of the little provincial cities, the roguery of 
intrigues in high life, bejewelled corruption, politi- 
cal intrigue, the machinations of ambitious priests, 
the cruel coldness of shopmen's selfishness, gourman- 



EMILE ZOLA, 193 

dism and sensuality, with such power, that although 
preceded on this road by other admirable writers, 
you seem to have entered it for the first time, and 
those flagellated feel the old wounds opened with a 
spasm thay have never experienced before. Fulfilling 
this office, he has been driven perhaps beyond his art ; 
but has opened in art new crevices through which we 
see fresh horizons, and has taught colors, blows of 
the chisel, shadings, forms and means of every na- 
ture, (from which they can extract an immense ad- 
vantage) to the thousand other geniuses, although 
they set out on another road, toward an entirely dif- 
ferent goal. And there is no occassion to fear that 
a gloomy or excessive school will rise from him, be- 
cause the descriptive faculty, which is his great 
power, cannot proceed farther on the road on which 
he travels, nor the worship of naked truth have a 
more intrepid or faithful priest. His imitators will 
fall miserably weakened in his footprints, and he will 
remain alone where he has arrived, at the utmost 
limits of his art, upright at the edge of a precipice, 
into which, whoever wishes to pass him at any cost, 
will fall headforemost. But one cannot pronounce 
a final judgment upon him now, for he is only 



194 STUDIES OF PARIS, 

thirty-seven years of age, and is still in the flower of 
his youth as a writer, and it is possible that he may 
change Avhile increasing in stature. It is true that 
the road upon which he has started is so deeply 
cleft and so steep, that we cannot understand how 
he is to emerge from it. But it is certain that he 
will try to do so, and that if he does not succeed in 
the attempt, we shall witness one of those powerful 
efforts, and have from him one of those '' unsuccess- 
ful masterpieces," which cause no less surprise than 
the great triumphs. 

II. 

His literary history is one of the most curious of 
the period. His first works were Contes à Ninon, 
written at twenty-two, and published long thereafter. 
Even here there is the incipient Zola, with a tear in 
the eye and a smile on the lips, hardly disturbed by 
a slight expression of sadness. He does not value 
these tales at all, and grows angry with the critics, 
who, either sincerely or maliciously say they prefer 
them to his romances. To one of these men who 
expressed this opinion some time ago, he replied : 
** I thank you, but if you will come to my house I 



1 



EM I LE ZOLA. 1 95 

will show you several of my third-rate compositions 
which will probably please you more !" His first 
novels were those four bold ones, (among which 
was Thérése Raqiihi) now almost forgotten, that 
were defined by a critic as " putrid literature." In 
them there was the man Zola, but only from the 
waist up. His great artistic faculties, already ex- 
pressed, but not yet certain, felt the need of raising 
themselves upon hideous subjects, which attracted 
for themselves general attention. Yet one could see 
in those romances a most dauntless writer, who had 
resolved to make way for himself with his elbows — 
and he had brazen ones. One of these novels, 
Madeleine Férat, (which hinges on an incident wit- 
nessed by the author, about a girl, who abandoned 
by the man she loves, marries another, and has a 
few years later a son, who resembles the first), 
suggests to 4iim the idea of writing that series of 
physiological romances, which he called, Histoire 
Naturelle et Sociale d'une famille sous le Second Em- 
pire^ and from that first day all this work flashed 
through his mind, and he traced the geneological 
tree that he called Page d' Amour, 

I thought this also was one of those displays of 



196 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

"a vast and antique design," with which authors 
seek to enlarge, in the reading public, the concep- 
tion of their own works ; but the manuscripts I had 
the honor of seeing, completely disabused my mind 
of this idea. From the very beginning he produced 
a list of the principal personages in the Rougon- 
Macquart family, and destined to each his career, 
proposing to demonstrate in all, the effects of the 
origin, education, social class, places, circumstances 
and epoch. The first romances of this new " cycle " 
did not have much success. The linguists, the fas- 
tidious and all those v/ho taste books with a literary 
palate, felt the strength, the beauty therein and pre- 
sented them at their best ; but did not suspect that 
under them there was concealed a novelist of the 
first order. Zola became angry and threw down the 
gauntlet to Paris, by publishing the famous Ciirée^ 
in which he manifested the resolution of making a 
noise at any cost ; that superb and horrid saturnalia 
of rogues in white gloves, in which, the least dis- 
gusting of loves is that of a stepson for his step- 
mother, and the most honest woman, a mediator. 
The novel in fact, created a sensation, they called it 
scandalous, as they do at Paris, for the sake of good 



E MILE ZOLA. 19/ 

breeding ; but they read the book with avidity, and 
that strange name Zola resounded for some time 
on all sides. 

Yet this was not, however, the success which he 
desired and hoped for, and was less so for his later 
novels. The sale was small, the circle of readers 
limited, and Zola, who felt in himself the originality 
and strength of a popular novelist, was disappointed, 
but did not become discouraged. '' I am not accus- 
tomed," he wrote, '' to expect an immediate recom- 
pense for my works. For ten years I have been 
publishing novels without listening to hear the noise 
they made in falling into the crowd. When there is 
a pile of them the people, who are passing, will be 
forced to stop." His fame, nevertheless, went on 
increasing, although slowly. In Russia, where 
they keep up with all the boldest novelties in French 
literature, he was already noted and much thought 
of — but this was not enough for him. He needed a 
lasting and noisy success, which must raise him sud- 
denly and forever from the ranks of writers of talent 
who salute each other familiarly with a wave of the 
hand — and this he finally attained in V Assommoir, 
They commenced publishing it in the Bicn Public, 



198 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

but were obliged to leave it off half finished, so many 
were the protests launched against that '' Horror" 
by the subscribers. Then it was printed entirely in 
a literary journal, and before it was finished those 
hot polemics commenced, which became so furious 
after the publication of the volume, and which will 
be remembered as one of the fiercest literary battles 
of the present day. 

These polemics gave a powerful impulse to the 
success of the novel, and it was a noisy, enormous 
and incredible success. It had been years since 
so much had been heard about any book. For a 
long time Paris talked of nothing but VAssommoir, 
One heard it loudly discussed in the cafes, theatres, 
reading-rooms and even in the shops ; and this 
by the fanatical admirers, but they were more 
in number than the bitter adversaries. The un- 
Tieard of brutality of that novel seemed a challenge, 
a slap at Paris, a calumny against the French 
people ; and they called the book — " a dirty thing 
to be handled with the tongs," '' a monstrous abor- 
tion," and a ''galley offense" — and hurled against the 
author all the abuse that was possible, from the 
name of *' the enemy of his country," to that of 




E MILE ZOLA. 1 99 

égoutier littéraire,'' etc., without choosing their words. 
The theatrical reviews of the end of the year repre- 
sented him in the clothes of a garbage-gatherer who 
went around collecting filth with a harpoon in the 
streets of Paris. '' Ce nètait plus de la critique^* as 
he says, '' Cetait du massacred They denied his \ 
talent, originality, style and even grammar, — there j 
were even those who would not discuss him ; and ' 
they came very near offering personal challenges in/ 
the streets. And the most extravagant odious ru- 
mors were circulated about him, that he was a bun- 
dle of vice, a half brute, a man without heart like 
Lantier, a beast like Bec-Salé, and a ugly person 
like his father Bezougue, the grave digger. 

But meanwhile, editions succeeded editions, the 
dispassionate gastronomists said in a low voice that 
the novel was a masterpiece ; the Parisian populace 
read it largely, because they found in it their boule- 
vard^ buvette, shop and life insuperably depicted 
with new colors and touches of the brush, in com- 
parison with which all others seemed colorless, and 
the most enraged critics were obliged to recognise 
the fact, that in those pages which had been such a 
target, there was something that eternally blunted 



200 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

the points of their arrows. The great success of 
r Assommoir made the other novels sought after, 
and one may safely affirm that Zola became cele- 
brated then. His real celebrity only dates back 
three years. He, himself, wrote a short time since 
to one of his admirers in Italy : ^'■On ne m'a pas gate 
en France, II ny a pas longtemps qtion my salue." 
And nevertheless his celebrity is a singular one. 
An immense number of people admire him, but with 
an admiration in which there is a little anger, and a 
little diffidence, and look at him from a distance, as 
they would at an untamed bear. He has great talent, 
there is no denying that, we must resign ourselves 
to saying it, and allowing it to be said. He is still 
the liojt du jour at Paris, and has no rival but 
Daudet, who is not, however, of his style ; but they 
handle each other with gloves, in order not to arouse 
suspicion. Zola however, is not. conceited and ap- 
parently takes no notice of his celebrity. He does 
not force himself forward, but lives quietly in his 
corner, with his wife, mother and children. Very 
few know him by sight and it is a very rare thing to 
find his portrait anywhere. He does not frequent 
society, unless it be to study it, and when he goes 



EMILE ZOLA. 20I 

there with this aim in view, it is only to the house 
of Charpentier, the publisher, who has a superb 
establishment, where he gives fine entertainments 
which even Gambetta attends. He belongs to no 
coterie. Once he lived at the end of avenue Clichy, 
a most opportune place for the study of the people 
of r Assommoir ; now he lives in Rue Boulogne, 
where Ruffini resided and near the house of Sardou. 

III. 

Through my dear friend Parodi, I had the honor of 
knowing Zola, and of passing several hours v/ith him. 

He is a strongly built youth, resembling slightly 
in figure Victor Hugo, rather stouter, not very tall 
erect as a column and very pale, his palor being 
heightened by his black beard and hair, which stands 
up from his forehead like the bristles of a brush. It 
is a curous fact that all those who see the picture 
of Zola, say ; " This face is not unfamilar to me." 
He has a round face, audacious nose, and dark, bright 
eyes which have a critical expression ; the head of a 
thinker and the body of an athlete, well shaped and 
firm hands, the kind that one shakes and holds with 
pleasure. He reminded me of his Gueule d'or^ and it 



202 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

seemed to me that he would be able to perform the 
same feats with his anvil. His vigorous frame was 
well set off by his dress. He was in slippers, with- 
out collar or cravat, and wore a loose unbuttoned 
jacket, which allowed one to see the full protruding 
figure, well adapted for breaking the waves of liter- 
ary hatred and ire. During all the time that I was 
with him I never saw him laugh. 

He received me courteously, with a certain soldier- 
ly civility, and without the customary formula of 
compliments. Hardly were we seated before he 
took up a paper cutter, in the shape of a dagger 
with a sheath, and he retained it as long as the con- 
versation lasted, sheathing and unsheathing it in a 
rapid and energetic manner. We were in his study; 
a beautiful room full of light, decorated with many 
oil paintings, from which one could easily divine 
that he was a home-loving man, who lived much 
alone. 

Certain descriptions, in fact, of warm rooms filled 
with every comfort, that are to be found in his 
novels, can only have been written by a man who 
voluntarily remains in his own little nest amid all the 
refinements of a good home life. He had before 



EM I LE ZOLA. 203 

him a large table covered with books and papers 
carefully arranged, and scattered with many little 
gleaming objects of graceful form like the paper 
cutter; which revealed a fine artistic taste. The 
whole room indicated the elegant ease of the Paris- 
ian writer in vogue. On one side hung a large port- 
rait of himself, in oil, taken when he was twenty- 
seven. 

He spoke first of the Italian language. '^ I re- 
gret," he said, '^ that I am unable to read Italian 
books. We Frenchmen, are, in this regard, really to 
be pitied. We know no language save our own. 
But I ought to be familiar with the Italian as my 
father was an Italian." And he showed us the criti- 
que of our Emma in the Page d'Amour, published 
by the Antologia, saying that he was compelled to 
have it translated, as in trying to read it, half the 
sense escaped him. 

So let our courageous translators of V Assommoir 
be resigned ; Zola is not in a condition to compen- 
sate them by sincere praise for their exertions. 

Then he gave Parodi, two monosyllabic replies, in 
which he revealed all the frankness of his nature. 

Parodi had heard that a discussion about Chateau- 



204 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

briand which had taken place at table between Tur- 
ghénieff, Zola, Flambert and one of the Goncourt 
brothers, had been very warm indeed, lasting six 
hours, and that two of the gentlemen had defended 
the author of the Genie de Christianisme against 
the other two, who denied that he was a great 
writer. He, Parodi, thought that Zola had been 
one of the defenders and interrogated him on the 
subject in order to ascertain the truth of the matter. 
Then followed this curious dialogue : 

*' Vous aiinez beaucoup Chateaubriand ? * 

" JVo7tr 

" Vozis avez beaucoup lu Chateaubriand ? ** 

" Nonr 

" Then you are not the one who defended him in 
the discussion with Monsieur Turghénieff ? " 

" Jamais^ 

The defenders of Chateaubriand were Turghénieff 
and Flaubert ; Zola and Goncourt having obstinately 
fought against him. These four are in the habit of 
taking breakfast together once a month, and every 
time they do so, some discussion of this kind arises, 
which keeps them chained to the table for half the 
day. 



EMILE ZOLA. 20$ 

This was the introduction, after which Zola was 
compelled to talk of himself exclusively. My excel- 
lent friend had said to him the day before, in an- 
nouncing my visit : " Prepare to undergo a series 
of interrogations on all subjects." And he had pleas- 
antly replied : " I am ready." The questioning be- 
gan, but I did not dare undertake it, so my friend 
conducted it with exquisite tact, and Zola began 
speaking of himself without any preamble, just as 
naturally, in fact, as if he were talking of some one 
else. There is no need of declaring with what in- 
tense interest I listened to him. Yet, just as he was 
beginning to talk I was seized with a fit of ab- 
straction that made me suffer tortures. I do not 
know how it happened, but the ludicrous scene in 
the Faute de V Abbé Mouret flashed across my mind, 
that one, in which the old Atheist Jeanbernat gives 
the beating to that miserable monk Archangias in 
the light of the moon, and I was overcome by such 
an intense desire to laugh, that I bit my lips until 
they bled to keep from doing so. Zola first spoke 
of his family. The mother of his father was from 
Candia, and his father, Francesco Zola, from Treviso. 
After the publication of V Assommoir he received 



206 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

from Italy a number of letters written by distant 
relatives whom he had never known. He spoke 
with great affection of his father, who was a mili- 
tary engineer in the Austrian service ; a man of 
much cultivation, speaking Spanish, English, French 
and German, and who had published various scien- 
tific writings, v/hich Zola preserved and displayed 
with intense pride. I do not remember in what 
year he left the army, but it was while he was quite 
young, and he began the practice of civil engineer- 
ing. He went to Germany, where he worked at the 
building of one of the first railways, then to England 
and Marseilles, from whence he made several excur- 
sions to Algiers, working all the time. From Mar- 
seilles he was called to Paris for the fortifications. 
Herie he married and here was born Emile Zola, who 
remained in Paris until he was three years old. 
Then the family moved to Aix, where Francesco 
Zola worked at the construction of a great canal, 
which was called after him, and still retains his name. 
Zola possessed a large portion of the bonds of this 
canal ; worth nearly one hundred and fifty thousand 
francs. When he died, the company failed, and at the 
closing up of accounts, after the creditors were paid, 



EMILE ZOLA. 20;^ 

only a very small capital was left for the widow. 
Thus, the son, Emile, experienced want from the 
time he was a boy, and he passed a youth in which 
there was little pleasure. At eighteen he came to 
Paris to seek his fortune, and here there commenced 
for him a series of very trying experiences. He was 
employed for sometime in the Maison Hachette, 
first at a hundred francs a month, then a hundred 
and fifty, finally two hundred. After this he became 
collaborator of Figai'o. Shortly thereafter, he lost 
that position and remained without work. Arriving 
at this point, Zola cut short his narration, but I un- 
derstood from certain flashes of his eyes and from a 
certain compression of his lips, that that must 
have been the most trying period of his life. He 
contrived to live by scribbling here and there, but he 
scarcely earned enough to maintain himself, and 
that not every day. That was the time in which he 
made those deep and sad studies of his Parisian 
people, which appear particularly in V Assommoir 
and the Ventre de Paris. He lived among the 
poor, dwelt in those workmen's houses which he 
describes so powerfully in V Assommoir \ in one, 
among the others, where three hundred of the 



208 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

most miserable laborers lived. He studied vice and 
hunger, knew Nana, labored, fasted, lost heart, and 
struggled on bravely. But, in fine, his character was 
strengthened by that life and he came out from it 
armed aad prepared for the battles which were 
awaiting him in the great arena of art. At the age 
for drafting, however, he was neither French nor Ital- 
ian, and could choose between the two nationalities. 
" I was born here," he said. " I had here many rec- 
ollections and many ties, was beginning to make 
my way, loved the place where I had suffered, and 
so chose France for my country." 

Such is his early life as a man. His early literary 
career is no less singular, and he described it with the 
same frankness, continuing to play with the dagger. 

He began school late, because he was not 
strong. " I studied little," he said, '' I took prizes ; 
but was a bad scholar." He first felt the desire to 
write when he was fourteen. He wrote among other 
things a novel on the Crusades, which he still pre- 
serves, and he put in verse long extracts in prose 
from Chateaubriand ; a fact which should disconcert 
all the critics who firmly declare the indications of 
the character of a great writer are to be seen even in 



EMILE ZOLA. 209 

the early manifestation of childish talent. The first 
authors he read were Walter Scott and Victor Hugo. 
" I read the two authors together,'* he said, " but 
without feeling to any great degree the difference 
between them, because I could not then understand 
either the style or language of Victor Hugo." When 
he began reading Balzac (and this, too, is 
strange) Balzac wearied him, seemed tedious, heavy 
and uninteresting ; he neither understood him nor 
made him his own until long afterwards. Up to 
this time no reading had made a profound impres- 
sion upon him. Later, when he began- to read 
meditatively, his favorite authors were Musset, 
Flaubert, and Taine. One cannot imagine what at- 
tracted him in Musset, if it were not the sentiment 
of certain sensuous refinements of good society, 
which he, however, set forth in a perfectly dispas- 
sionate manner, like a calm, yet powerful artist. 
There is no need of speaking of Flaubert ; his is the 
same art, extended further, more minute, more crude, 
drawn in brighter colors and also more wearisome. 
From Taine he draws particularly the system of an- 
alysis. His method is that followed by Taine in the 
article on Balzac ; like him he proceeds quietly, firm- 



210 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

ly, methodically and with a heavy tread, from which 
arises, according to the opinion of some, a certain 
lack of fluency in his style, which is especially ap- 
parent in his later works. He has, as they say in 
France, " un peu le pas de V Elephant T The effect 
Balzac has upon him is wonderful and is most per- 
ceptible in all his books. He adores him, is his fol- 
lower, and glories in it. At the appearance of his 
first novels, every one spoke Balzac's name. Char- 
pentier presented him to his friends, saying: "Here 
is a new Balzac." For this reason he scarcely touched 
upon his literary father, as if the thing were an un- 
derstood matter. He said nothing else of his studies. 
He can have no classical culture, since he himself 
confessed that he had found difficulty in reading 
certain books in Latin ; and in this he is in the same 
condition as many of the most illustrious French 
writers of the period. But he educated himself, 
studied while struggling, like the generals of the rev- 
olution ; he studies little by little, in writing a novel, 
all the questions which have any connection with it, 
just as George Sand used to do. He reads continu- 
ally, forced by the imperative requirements of the po- 
lemic. He has at his fingers' end all the romances of 



EM I LE ZOLA, 211 

the century, knows Paris thoroughly, has perfect 
command of his language — and thinks. 

When we reached the most important subject of 
all, Parodi asked him ex-abrupto how he wrote a 
novel. This touched him to the quick. He un- 
sheathed nearly all the dagger, drove it back Avith 
all his force into the case, and commenced talking 
rapidly, growing more and more animated all the 
time. " This is the way," he said, " that I write a 
novel. I do not write it entirely, I let it write itself. 
I do not know how to invent incidents, this kind of 
imagination is entirely lacking in me. If I place 
myself at table to seek for a incident or any thread 
of romance, I may sit there for three days racking 
my brain, my head in my handr ; I lose my patience 
and do not succeed in accomplishing anything. For 
this reason I have made the resolution never to oc- 
cupy myself with the subject. I begin to work 
on my novel without knowing either the events 
which will transpire, the personages who will take 
part in it, or what will be the beginning and the end. 
I only know my leading character, my Rougon or 
Macquart^ m.an or woman, who is an old acquaint- 
ance. I generally occupy myself entirely with him, 



212 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

I meditate upon his temperament, the family in 
which he was born, the first impressions he may 
have received, and upon the social class to which I 
have determined he shall belong. This is my most 
important occupation, to study the people with 
whom this personage will have to deal, the places 
in which he will find himself, the air that he will 
have to breathe, his profession and habits, even to 
the most insignificant occupations to which he will 
dedicate different portions of the day. While 
studying out these things, there suddenly occur to 
my mind a series of descriptions which can find a 
place in the story, and will be like milestones on 
the road that he must travel. Now, for example, 
I am describing Nana, a Cocotte. I do not know 
exactly what will become of her ; but I do know all 
the descriptions that my novel will contain. In 
the first place I ask myself everything. Where 
does the Cocotte go? She goes to the theatres, to 
the first representations. That's ail right ! So the 
story is begun. The first chapter will contain 
the description of a first representation in one of 
our most elegant theatres. 

In order to do this, I must study. I attend sev- 



EM ILE ZOLA. 21 3 

eral first representations. To-morrow evening I 
go to the Gaité. I study the parquet, boxes, and 
stage ; notice all the most minute details of life be- 
hind the scenes ; I assist at the toilet of an actress ; 
and on returning home I sketch out my description. 
A Cocotte ^o^^ to the races, to a Grand Prix. Here 
is another description which I will put in my story 
— at a suitable distance from the first one. I go to 
study the Grand Prix. A Cocotte frequents the 
great restaurants. I frequent these places for some 
time, I notice everything, ask questions, take notes 
and divine the rest. And so on until I have studied 
all the aspects of that side of the world, in which a 
woman of this kind is in the habit of moving. After 
two or three months of this studv, I have become 
acquainted with that sort of life, I see, feel, and live 
it, in my head, so that I am sure of giving to my 
novel the color and real perfume of that world. Be- 
side this, living for some time as I have done in that 
social circle, I have known the people belonging to 
it, I have heard real facts related, know what is 
usually happening there, have learned the language 
spoken there, and have in my head a quantity of 
types, scenes, fragments of dialogues, and episodes 



214 STUDIES OF PARIS, 

that form a confused novel consisting of a thousand 
loose and scattered pieces. Then remains that which 
is the most difficult for one to do, namely, to bind 
with one thread, as best I can, all these reminis- 
cences and all these scattered impressions. This is 
almost always a long piece of work. But I set my- 
self at it quite phlegmatically and instead of em- 
ploying imagination, I use logic. I reason with my- 
self and write my soliloquies word for word, just as 
they come to me, so that, read by another, they 
would appear a strange thing. From w^hich arises 
this result. What would be the natural consequence 
of an affair of this kind ? This other fact. Is this 
other fact one that may interest some one else? 
Certainly. So consequently it is logical that this 
other person acts in this manner. Then some new 
character may appear, that one, for instance, whom 
I saw in such a place, on such an evening. I seek 
the immediate consequences of the smallest event ; 
that which arises logically, naturally and inevitably 
from the character and situation of the personages 
represented. I do the work of a commissary of po- 
lice who from some clue he has received wishes to 
succeed in discovering the author of some mysteri- 



EM ILE ZOLAk 215 

ous crime. Often I encounter, nevertheless, many 
difficulties. Sometimes there are not more than 
two very fine threads to connect, a very simple 
consequence to deduce, and I do not succeed, 
though I labor and worry over it in vain. Then I 
cease thinking, because I know it is lost time. Two, 
three or four days pass. One fine morning, at last, 
while I am at breakfast and thinking of something 
else, suddenly these two threads connect themselves, 
the consequence is found, and all the difficulty is at 
an end. Then a torrent of light runs through the 
whole story. '^ im flot de lumiere colile sur tout le 
romana I see everything and everything is done. 
My peace of mind being restored, I am sure of my- 
self, and nothing remains to be done but the most 
agreeable portion of my work. I seat myself quiet- 
ly, methodically, with time-table in hand, like a 
mason. 

I write just so much every day ; three printed 
pages, not one line more, and that during the morn- 
ing only. I write almost without correction, because 
I have been meditating upon it all for months, and 
barely is it written when I put the page aside, and 
never read it again until it is printed. I can calcu- 



2l6 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

late infallibly the day when I shall finish it. I em- 
ployed six months in writing U7te page d'Amour ; 
a year in writing V Assommoir, 

'■^ L Assommoir !' — he added, giving a blow on the 
handle of the dagger, — "was a torture to me. It is 
the one which has cost me the most trouble in putting 
together the smallest details, upon which it rests. I 
intended writing a novel on alcohol. I did not know 
anything else. I had collected a number of notes on 
the effects of the abuse of alcohol. I had determined 
to make a brute die the kind of death of which 
Coupeau died. I did not know, however, who would 
be the victim, and before even looking for him, I 
went to the hospital of St. Anne to study sickness 
and death, like a physician. Then I assigned to 
Gervaise the occupation of a laundress, and in- 
stantly thought of that description of a real wash- 
house in which I passed many hours. Then, with- 
out knowing anything of Goujety whom I next im- 
agined, I thought of making use of the recollections 
of the workshop of an ironmonger and a blacksmith, 
where I had passed half days at a time when I v/as 
a boy, and which is alluded to in the Contes à Nmon, 
Thus, before having woven the thread of my ro- 



EM ILE ZOLA. 2\*J 

mance, I had already prepared the description of a 
dinner in Gervaise s shop and that visit to the mu- 
seum of the Louvre. I had already studied my beg- 
gars, r Assommai r of pére Colombe , the shops, Hotel 
BoncceuTy everything in fact. When all that re- 
mained was disposed of, I commenced to occupy 
myself with that which was to happen ; and reasoned 
thus while writing it. Gervaise comes to Paris 
with Lantiery her lover. What will follow ? Lantier 
is a niauvais sujet, so she plants him. Then, will 
you credit it ? I came to a stand still here and could 
not go on for several days. Several days thereafter 
I took another step. Gervaise is found ; it is natural 
that she should marry again. She does so, and 
marries the laborer, Coupeau. This is the man who 
is to die at St. Anne. But here I was stopped again. 
In order to put the personages and scenes which I 
had in my head in their respective places, and to 
give some sort of a framework to the novel, I needed 
one more fact, one only, that would connect the 
two preceding ones. These three facts would be 
sufficient, the rest was all found, prepared and writ- 
ten out in my mind. But I could not get hold of 
this third fact. I passed several days quite worried 



2 1 8 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

and discontented. When, suddenly one morning, I 
was seized with an idea. Lantier finds Gervaise 
again ; makes friends with Coupeau, installs him- 
self in the house, — et alors il s et ab lit un rne'nage a 
troisj comme j'en ai vu pliisieurs ; and ruin follows. 
I breathe again. The novel is completed." 

Saying this, he opened a box, took out a roll of 
manuscript and placed it before me. It contained 
the first studies of V Assoinmoir, on so many fly 
leaves. 

On the first leaves was a sketch of the characters 
— notes about the person, temperament and charac- 
ter. I found the Miroir Characteristiqiie of Ger- 
vaise, Co7ipeau, Mamma Coupeati, the Lorilleux, 
Boches, Gouje't and Madame Le'rat. All of them 
were there. They seemed the notes of a registrar 
of a court, wTitten in laconic and free language, like 
that of the novel, and interpolated with short rea- 
sonings, like : Born like this, educated in this manner ^ 
he will conduct himself in this way. In one place 
was written : '' What else can a rascal of this kind do ?" 
Among others, I was struck with a sketch of La7t~ 
tier, which was nothing but a list of adjectives, each 
one stronger than the other, such d^sgrossier, sensuel 



EM ILE ZOLA. 219 

brutal, egoiste, polisson. In some parts was written, 
" Use such and such a one " (some one known by 
the author). All written in large, clear characters, 
and in perfect order. 

Then I saw sketches of places, scarcely outlined, 
but as accurate as the drawing of an engineer. 
There were a number of them. All V Assominoir 
was drawn, the streets of the quarter in which the 
plot was laid, with the corners and signs of the 
shops ; the zigzag which Gervaise took to avoid the 
creditors, the Sunday escapades of Nana, the pere- 
grinations of the set of topers from bastringue to 
bastringice, and from bousingot to boiisingot ; the hos- 
pital and slaughter-house, between which came and 
went on that terrible evening the poor ironing 
woman who was maddened by hunger. The great 
house of Marescot was traced minutely — all the 
upper story, the landings, windows, the den of the 
grave-digger, Pere Brics hole — all those dark hall- 
ways, in which one could hear U7i souffle de crevaison, 
those walls which resounded like empty vaults, those 
doors through which were heard the music of blows 
and the cries of mioclies, dying from hunger. There 
was even the plan of Gervaise' s shop, room by room, 



220 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

with indications of beds and tables in some places 
erased and corrected. One could see that Zola had 
amused himself by the hour, quite forgetting, per- 
haps, the story, so buried v/as he in his fiction, as if 
it were a true record. On other pages were notes of 
various kinds. I remember two of them particu- 
larly — " twenty pages of description of such a thing, 
twelve pages of description of such a scene, to be 
divided into three parts." One could see from this 
that he had the description in his head, all arranged 
before it was written, and that he heard it resound- 
ing internally in measured beat, like an air to which 
he must put words. This way of working with the 
compasses is much rarer than is imagined. Even in 
things of the imagination, Zola is a great mechanic. 
One can see how his descriptions proceed, symmetri. 
cally and in turn, separated at times by a species of 
digression, placed there so that the reader can take 
breath, and divided into almost equal parts, like . 
that of the flowers of the parlor in the Faute de 
VAbbé Mouret, that of the thunder storm in the 
Page d'Amo7ir, and that of the death of Coupeau 
in VAssommoir. One would say that his mind, in 
order to work freely and quietly at all the minutiae, 



EMILE ZOLA. 221 

is obliged to trace for itself all the clear outlines of 
the work, to know exactly at what points it can 
rest, and almost what extent and what shape the 
work itself will present in print. When the mate- 
rial increases too rapidly, he cuts it so to make it 
fit into that given form, and when it is insufficient 
in quantity, he makes an effort to draw it out to a 
certain point. He has an invincible love of harmo- 
nious proportions, which sometimes may degenerate 
into prolixity, but which often, by compelling 
thought to dwell upon his subject, makes the work 
more profound and more complete. 

There were beside these, notes extracted from the 
Re'forme Sociale en France of Le Play, the Hérédité 
Naturelle of Docteur Lucas, and from other works 
that he used in writing his novel — Le Sttblime, among 
others, which, after the publication of f Assommoir^ 
was re-printed and re-read, because it is the privilege 
of masterpieces to give honor even to mediocre 
works that have been of assistance to them. 

Then we questioned him about his study of lan- 
guages. He spoke of those with much complacency. 
It is generally believed that he has studied the 
argot in the common people ; this is partly the case, 



222 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

but more so in some especial dictionaries of which 
there are several excellent ones, just as he learned 
particularly from those dictionaries of arts and 
trades that very rich vocabulary of work-shops and 
shops, which is found in his popular novels. But in 
order to write the argot the study of the dictionary 
did not suffice ; he had to know it, or rather make 
it his own. So he compiled a dictionary divided 
into subjects, in which he wrote as he went along, 
all the words and phrases that he found in books 
and picked up in the street. When writing VAssoin- 
moir^heiore treating the subject, he ran through the 
corresponding part of the dictionary, then wrote, 
keeping it before his eyes, and marking with a red 
pencil, every phrase as he put it in the book, in 
order to avoid repeating it. " I am a patient man, 
you see,'* he said. " I work with the placidity 
of an old compiler, take pleasure even in the most 
material occupations, become attached to my notes 
and old writings ; I bury myself in my work and I 
am as comfortable as an indolent man in his easy 
chair." The strangest thing about it all, is that he 
said all those things without smiling ; not even the 
ghost of a smile. His very pale face never assumed 



EM ILE ZOLA. 223 

one of those thousand conventional expressions of 
amiability and gayety which are usual in those cold 
people who wish to give color to their conversation. 
In truth I never remember having seen a more 
" independent " face. There was only one move- 
ment which he made from time to time ; he dilated 
his nostrils and clinched his teeth, thus widening his 
jaws, which gave him a firmer expression of resolu- 
tion and pride. He spoke of the success of VAssom- 
moir. He said while writing the novel, he had no 
idea of the noise it would make. He had been 
obliged to interrupt his work on account of his wife's 
illness ;then he took it up again against his will, and his 
heart was not in it. More than all, a friend whose 
opinion he greatly valued, after reading the manu- 
script, predicted a failure. He himself thought the 
subject was not interesting. He let us divine, in 
fact, that not even despite its great success did he 
consider it his finest novel. 

" Which one did you like best ?" I asked him. 

His reply gave me great satisfaction. 
" Le Ventre de Parish' he replied. 

And, in fact, the story of the disgusting and ini- 
quitous plebian gossip, which ends in ruining a good 



224 STUDIES OF PARIS, 

man, and which revolves from the first to the last 
page in that very strange theatre the Halles, full of 
color, odors, etc., among those enormous and impu- 
dent fish-vendors, among those intrigues nested 
in the vegetables and poultry feathers, amid that 
strange network of rival shopkeepers and republican 
plots, has always seemed to me one of the most 
original and happiest inventions of French genius. 

He spoke, too, of the criticisms on /' Assomrnoir^ 
and even in speaking he choose the hardest and 
most telling phrases with which to express his own 
thoughts. In mentioning a " school " which does 
not please him he said: ''You will see what a 
splendid sweeping out we will give it with the be- 
som." In every one of his words one feels his char- 
acter strongly impressed, not only in the obstinate 
resistances, but the bold attacks. In his criticisms 
in fact, he spares no one. He collected several of 
them in a volume which he entitled. My Hatreds, 
He owes everything to himself, has passed through 
every kind of trial, and is covered with scars. The 
battle is his life, he wishes glory, but that taken by 
force and accompanied by the turmoil of the tem- 
pest. The most pitiless critics only increased his cour- 



EMILE ZOLA. 22$ 

age. They thought him a subject for torture on 
account of the crudeness of the Curée ; he went 
twice as far in V Assominoir. He experiences sav- 
age delight in exciting the public. " The failures " 
don't effect him at all. '' Onward ! " he cried after 
one of his greatest falls ; '* I am on the ground, 
but art is standing. Is the battle lost because the 
soldier is wounded? To work! Let us begin 
again ! " And he gives his opinion of the critics in 
his own particular way. The French critics are lack- 
ing in intelligence. Nothing more nor less than this. 
*' There are only three or four men in France who 
are capable of judging a book. The others either 
judge it with the literary prejudices of fools, or they 
are perfect impostors ! " He has this great fault, as 
a friend said of him, that when he talks to an im- 
becile, he gives him to understand immediately that 
he is an imbecile; ** a defect," he said, " which closes 
many doors to him. But he does not care to be 
loved. Pie considers the public as his natural enemy. 
What use is there in caressing it ? It is a v/retched 
beast that returns your caresses with bites. It is 
better to show one's teeth and let it see that they 
are as strong as its ov/n. It barks, so that it may 



226 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

be followed. All those who argue from this asperity 
of character that he has no heart, are quite mistaken. 
All his intimate friends affirm this. At home Avith 
his family, he is another Zola , he has few friends, 
but loves those dearly ; he is not demonstrative, but 
writes letters full of sentiment, and has an affection- 
ate heart under a coat of mail. 

He explained more clearly in speaking of the sale 
of books in Paris, the precise idea he has of the 
public : 

*' Here you can do nothing," he said, letting go 
of the dagger for the first time, but seizing it again 
instantly, '' nothing at all, if you do not create a 
sensation. You must be discussed, ill-treated and 
raised in the air by the ebullition of inimical hatred, 
The Parisian never purchases a book spontaneously, 
just from curiosity ; he never buys it until his ears 
are filled with it, and it has become an event worth 
chronicling, of which you must be able to talk in 
society. If it be spoken of, no matter what is said, 
its fortune is made. Criticism gives life to every- 
thing; it is only silence that destroys. Paris is an 
ocean ; but an ocean in which you are lost in the 
calm, but saved in the storm. In what other way 



1 



EM I LE ZOLA. 22/ 

can you arouse from indifference this enormous city, 
so thoroughly intent upon her affairs and pleasures, 
in amassing money and spending it ? She only 
hears roars and the sound of the cannon, and woe 
to him who has no courage ! " 

This is what Parodi said to me : " Here no one 
is esteemed who does not esteem himself. The first 
thing to do is to affirm resolutely one's own right to 
glory. He who makes little of himself is lost — woe 
to the modest man! " 

Zola is neither modest nor vain, but is blunt. 
With the same frankness with which he acknowl- 
edges the weak points of his genius, he speaks, as 
is seen of the strong ones. Speaking of his studies 
from nature, he says : '* I am not obliged to see 
everything ; one aspect is enough for me, the other 
I can divine ; " herein lies genius. When he wrote 
the Page d' Amour ^ he said : *' I will make all Paris 
weep." In defending one of his comedies which 
had failed, he said : " Why did it fail ? Because 
the public expected from the author of Rougon- 
Macqitart an extraordinary comedy — one of the 
first order — something quite miraculous.*' But he 
said this with such an air of certainty and sim- 



228 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

plicity, that one could not think of accusing him of 
conceit. In this he reveals his Italian nature, less 
polished than the French, just as he reveals it in his 
criticisms, in which he says the severest things with- 
out choosing or softening his language, and he pre- 
pares the bitter pills without gilding them, a thing 
which is repugnant to the character of the French 
critic. He is Italian in this too, that he has our 
genuine causticity, consistent rather in the thing 
itself than in the spirit, and this is not true French 
wit. He is aware of this, and is proud of the fact. 
** Je nai pas cet entortillemcnt d'esprit. J e ne sais 
parler le pa pot age a la mode. I detest bons-mots, 
and the public adores them. This is the principal 
reason why we cannot agree." 

Then he touched lightly upon the question of 
realism and idealism. On this subject I respect 
profoundly the opinions of a writer like Zola. But 
I do not believe in these immovable professions of 
faith, and in these banners waved with such furor. 
An author writes in a certain manner because his char- 
acter, education and the conditions of his life urge 
him on from that point. When he has gone a great 
distance on this road, when he has expended in this 



E MILE ZOLA. 229 

particular form of art a great deal of his strength, 
and has been successful, he is persuaded that he 
would never get so far in a different direction, so 
raises his ensign and says : *' In hoc signo vinccsy 
But what would this kind of art become if all fol- 
lowed it ? A sentence of Renan's always comes to 
my mind, " The world is a spectacle which God has 
prepared for himself. Do not let us make it all one 
color, unless we wish to weary of it." " There is 
place for all," as Silvio Pellico said ; '' but no one 
will allow himself to be persuaded of the fact." I 
cannot understand how there can exist a class of 
talented people, who rap a portion of humanity 
over the head because it will not feel and express 
life as they feel and express it. It is as if thin 
people wished to prohibit fat ones, and lymphatic 
ones those who are nervous. Who does not see, 
that at the bottom it is simply a war-which certain 
faculties of the mind wage against other faculties? 
Emile Zola, no less than the others, only draws the 
water towards his own mill. He will say, for in- 
stance, that Greek tragedy is realistic, and that one 
ought never to describe anything that is not, or has 
not been seen ; that when a tree is put upon the 



230 STUDIES OF PARIS, 

stage, it ought to be a real one ; and perhaps in his 
heart he will laugh at these affirmations. When he 
is caught in contradiction, he replies ingeniously : 
" Que voulez-voiis ? II faut avoir un drapcati ? " 
We admit this, but it is almost always not the flag 
of one's own faith, but of one's own genius. Is 
this same Zola always realistic when he gives heart 
and mind to the bees and flowers ? To a man like 
him we can well say what we think. He spoke too 
of the theatre. He said that it was a false state- 
ment of the newspapers that he had employed the 
comedy writers, whose names I have forgotten, to 
dramatize V Assoinmoir. He had spoken on this 
subject about La Curc'e in whose leading character, 
Renée, the celebrated actress, Sarah Bernhardt, 
had manifested much interest. But of his novels, 
only one, up to the present time, TJieresc Raquin, 
he had himself converted into a drama, in which 
the description of that terrible marriage night 
of TJierese and Laurent, where the disgusting 
spectre of the drowned husband appears, made a 
very fine scene. The theatre, however, possesses 
an intoxicating and irresistible attraction for Zola, 
as it does for all the modern writers, to whom no 



EM ILE ZOLA. 25 1 

literary glory seems sufficient, if it has not been 
crowned with a success upon the stage. Because 
at Paris, the most theatrical city of the world, a 
dramatic victory suddenly gives the fame and for- 
tune that the success of ten books cannot bestow. 
His (Zola's) great ambition is to put V Assommoir 
upon the stage. Up to the present time he has not 
worked, one may say, save to prepare himself for 
this great event. He has had no marked success, 
has failed more than once, but he is very persistent. 
He tries to keep step with the critic, fighting m 
the breech, the comedy à la mode, la comedie (T inr 
triglie, ce joujoic donne' au public, ce jeu de patience^ 
which he would like to lead back to ancient forms, 
to that standard which consists entirely of types and 
situations, and not in that spirit fouette' en neige, ré- 
leve d'une point e de muse, which pleases by its nov- 
elty, and of which nothing will be known in five years' 
time ; to those characters largely developed into a 
simple and logical action, to profound and free an- 
alysis, and by dialogues chosen by every convention ; 
to a form in fine, in which his strong powers as a 
writer of romance can have full scope. And pro- 
pounding these theories, he defends most obstinate- 



232 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

\y his dramatic works. A friend went to visit him 
at the Palais Royal, after the failure of his Boiiton 
de Rose, and found him seated at a table with a pile 
of written pages before him. " What are you do- 
ing?" he asked. " Voiis compreiiez^' he replied, "y> 
ne veux pas lacker ma piece y He was writing a de- 
fence of the Bouton de Rose, a most curious thing, in 
which he revealed his character better than in an 
epistle of five volumes. He began by an ex- 
position of the subject of the comedy, taken in part 
from the Conies drolatiques, of Balzac, and showed 
how it revolved in his mind, and the rights of every 
character and every scene. " It is all right, then," 
he said. '' The drama has failed," — I repeat almost 
verbatim his words — " I accept all the responsibility. 
This drama has become very dear to me from the 
odious brutality with which it was treated. The 
savage outbursts of the crowd has raised and in- 
creased its value in my eyes. Later there will be an 
appeal. Literary suits are liable to abolition. The 
public has not been willing to understand my work, 
because it has not found therein that kind of vis 
comica which is sought, and which is a thoroughly 
Parisian flower, blooming on the side-walks of the 



EM ILE ZOLA. 233 

boulevards. It has found my wit coarse! Diable! 
How can they stand the bluntness of a man who 
cam.e forward in a honest way, calling things by their 
name? Yes, the flower of the old French narrative 
exists no longer, these types are no longer under- 
stood. I ought to have placed a notice on the 
backs of all my characters. And then a good half 
of the theatre prayed that my Botiton de Rose might 
fail. They had gone there as you go into the tent 
of a wild beast tamer, with the secret desire of see- 
ing me devoured. I have made many enemies by 
my theatrical critiques, in which sincerity was my 
only strength. He who judges the works of others 
exposes himself to retaliations. The vexed Vau- 
devillisti and the exasperated dramatists said to 
themselves : *' At last ! We will go for once and 
criticise this terrible man ! " In the orchestra there 
were gentlemen who avowed to each other their in- 
tentions. Then there was another reason. I am a 
novelist. This is enough. If I should succeed in 
the theatre I should occupy too much space. It was 
necessary to prevent this. And on the other hand 
it was only just that I should suffer for the forty- 
two editions of VAssommoir^ and the eighteen edi- 



234 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

tions of the Page d' Amour. ' Let us destroy him !' 
they said, and they did it. People Hstened to the 
first act, hissed the second and refused to hear the 
third. The tumult was such that the critics could 
not hear the names of the charaters ; some innocent 
words of argot burst into the theatre like bomb- 
shells; the walls threatened to tumble, and nothing 
could be understood. This is the way I was killed. 
Now I no longer have any feeling of rancor or sad- 
ness. But the day after I could not suppress a just 
feeling of indignation. I thought that the sec- 
ond evening the comedy would not reach the second 
act. It seemed to me that the paying public ought 
to complete the disaster. I went to the theatre, 
very late, and climbing the stairs I asked an artist, 
" Are they growing angry up there ? " The artist 
replied, smilingly, '' Oh, no, sir; all the jokes were 
enjoyed. La salle est superbe^ and they are killing 
themselves laughing." It was true ; no sign of dis- 
approbation was to be heard ; the success was im- 
mense. I remained there through one act to listen 
to that laughter, and I almost choked as I felt the 
tears filling my eyes. I thought of the theatre the 
first evening, and I asked myself the reason of that 



EM I LE ZOLA. 235 

inexplicable brutality, from the moment that the 
true audience gave my work such a different kind of 
reception. These are the facts. Let the honest 
critics give me an explanation. Boitton de Rose had 
four representations ; the largest sum of money was 
taken in at the second. For what reason was it al- 
lowed ? Because the press had not spoken, and the 
public came and laughed with confidence. The third 
day the critics began their work of strangula- 
tion ; the first discharge of furious articles wounds 
the comedy to the heart ; and then the people hesi- 
tate and withdrew from a work which not one voice 
defends, and which the most tolerant cast into the 
mire. The few curious ones who ventured, enjoyed 
themselves immensely ; the effect increases at every 
representation ; the artists, growing franker, act with 
a marvellous unity. What does this matter ? The 
strangulation has been successful ; the audience of 
the first evening drew the cord, and criticism gave 
to it the final tug. Nevertheless, the Boiiton de Rose 
holds its own upon the stage, provided there be any 
one who deigns to hear it. I think it well written, 
that certain situations are amusing and original, and 
that time will acknowledge this. Some one said in 



23^ STUDIES OF PARIS. 

the cori-idor of the theatre on the first evening: 
* Well, will Emile Zola continue to be a theatrical 
critic ? ' They will see whether I will be one or not. 
And more boldly, too, than before — they may rest 
assured of that." 

The conversation fell once more upon his novels, 
and Zola satisfied my curiosity upon some points. 
His characters are almost all of them recollections or 
acquaintances of other times, some of them sketched 
even in the Contes à Ninon. Lantier, for instance, 
he knew in flesh and blood, and he is, in fact, one 
of the most wonderfully life-like characters in 
rAssoinmoir. 

The idea of the monk Archangéas, in the Faute 
de r Abbé Moiiret^ of that comical hooded villain 
who preached religion in the language of an intoxi- 
cated porter, he took from a provincial paper, where 
he read the account of a certain monk, a schoolmas- 
ter, who had been condemned for abuse of — force. 
Certain queer replies which the accused had given 
the judges presented the character perfectly com- 
plete. While he was talking of that novel, I could 
not refrain from expressing to him my great admi- 
ration of those splendid pages in which he described 



EM ILE ZOLA. 23/ 

the religious ecstacles of the young priest before the 
image of the Virgin, pages worthy of a great 
poet. 

"You cannot imagine," he replied "the trouble 
that that wretched Abbé Moiwet cost me. In order 
to be able to describe him at the altar, I went sev- 
eral times to hear Mass at Notre Dame, For his 
religious education I consulted many priests. No 
one, however, could give me all the explanations 
that I needed I overturned shops of Roman Cath- 
olic books, devoured immense volumes on religious 
Ceremonies and manuals for curates in the country, 
but I still seemed to lack sufficient material for my 
work. A priest who had abandoned his orders gave 
me the necessary information." 

I asked him if he had made as accurate and prac- 
tical studies in order to describe the life of the 
Halles, the cheese shops, the work of the ironing 
women, the discussions in parliament and the lan- 
guage of the working men. 

" Necessarily," he replied. 

"And to describe the thunder storm in the ^ Page 
d'Amour' " 

" To describe that scene, I got thoroughly drench- 



238 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

ed several times in viewing Paris from the towers of 
Noire DavtcT 

I asked him if he had ever witnessed a battle. He 
replied in the negative, and this surprised me very 
greatly, because in the battle between the insurgents 
and the imperial troops, in the Fortune des Roiigons^ 
you can hear the whistling of the balls and see dis- 
order and death as no other writer has ever repre- 
sented them. 

At last he began speaking of his future novels, 
and in this conversation he grew more animated 
than ever — his face became tinged with a light red, 
his voice grew stronger, and I cannot tell you how 
he used that dagger. 

He is going to write a novel in which he will de- 
scribe French military life as it is. This will raise a 
tempest, and will give him enemies in France, but no 
matter. The book will be called Le Soldati and will 
contain a grand description of the battle of Sedan. 
He wùU go on purpose for this to Sedan, and will 
remain there fifteen days, studying the ground like 
a guide, inch by inch, and perhaps something will 
come of it. In another novel he will describe the 
death of an intemperate man from spontaneous com- 



EM ILE ZOLA. 239 

bustion. Others have done this, but he will do it 
in his own particular way. The man will have the 
habit of passing the evening beside the fire-place, his 
pipe in mouth, and he will take fire while lighting it. 
He will describe everything; and saying this, he knit 
his brows and his eyes flashed as if he saw at that 
very moment the horrible spectacle. The people in 
the house will enter the room the following morning 
and will find nothing but the pipe and a handfid of 
somethÌ7ig {tene poigjiée de qiielque chose). Then he will 
write a novel which will have for its subject Com- 
merce^ the Grands Magasins, the Louvre and the 
Bon Marche^ the conflict between great and small 
commerce, of the millions with the hundred thou- 
sand francs — a vast and original subject, full of new 
colors, new type and new scenes, which he will use 
as a red hot iron in treating a new kind of sore in 
Paris. Then another novel. The Struggle of Ge- 
nius Making a Way for Itself in the World, a band 
of young men who go to Paris to seek their fortunes, 
the life of journalism, literary life, art, criticism, 
poverty in decent dress, the eiTorts, desperations and 
triumphs of young men of genius who are devoured 
by ambition and hunger — a history in which he will 



240 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

pour out all the blood which issued from the wounds 
of his heart when he was twenty ; and, finally, a 
novel more original than any of the others, Avhich 
will turn upon a network of railroads — a great sta- 
tion in which ten roads cross each other, and for 
every pair there will be some episode, and all these 
trains will meet at the principal station. The whole 
novel will have the coloring of the place: and one 
will hear therein, with an accompaniment of music, 
the tumult of that busy life. There will be love in 
the coupes, accidents in the tunnels, the working of 
the locomotive, the collision, crash, disaster and 
flight — all this black, smoky, noisy world in which 
he has lived in thought for a long time. These will 
all be novels of the Roiigon-M acquari style. He 
has already in his mindj like a vision, thousands of 
scenes — confused sketches, clear pages, tremendous 
catastrophes, amusing adventures and striking des- 
criptions, which come to him constantly and are the 
vital food of his soul. He has still eight novels to 
write. When the history of Rougon-Macqiiart is 
finished, he hopes that, judging the entire work, the 
critics will do him justice. Meanwhile, he works 
quietly, and goes straight forward to his appointed 



EM ILE ZOLA. 24 1 

goal without looking to right or left. His study is 
his citadel, in which he feels himself secure, and for- 
gets the world, so absorbed is he in les graves joids- 
sances de la recherche du vrai* 

" You see, he said at last, '' I am a home-loving 
man. I am good for nothing without my pen, ink- 
stand, that portfolio before my eyes and this foot- 
stool under my feet. Taken out of my nest there 
is nothing of me. This is the reason that I have no 
desire to travel. When I arrive in a strange city the 
same thing always happens. I shut myself up in 
my room, get out my books and read incessantly for 
three days, without putting my nose outside the 
door. On the fourth day I go to the window and 
count the people passing by. The fifth day I take 
my departure." 

"There is, however," he added, " a journey which 
I shall certainly take — a journey to Italy." 

" When ?" I asked, anxiously. 

' * When I have finished Nana^' he replied. "■ Prob- 
ably next spring. It is one of my greatest desires." 

He asked, in fact, which were the most propitious 
months for a journey with his family into Italy. It 
is needless to say how strongly I urged him not to 



242 STUDIES OF PARIS 

change his mind, and with what pleasure I saw in 
imagination a superb banquet, at which were seated 
Italian idealists and realists of every age and kind, 
fraternizing for one evening at least, in order to do 
honor to a great genius and a strong and sincere 
character. 

Meanwhile, he continued to talk as he stood near 
the door, with that same manly and amiable frank- 
ness, with those resolute gestures and his beautiful 
pale, proud face. Seen thus at the end of his ele- 
gant study, filled with books and papers and gilded 
by a ray of sunlight, he presented the appearance 
of an exquisite picture, representing genius, fortune 
and strength ; and the voices of the two little Zolas, 
who were playing in an adjoining room, added to it 
a lovely feature which rendered it sweeter and more 
noble still. 

Those last words which he said to me at the door, as 
he pressed my hand with one of his, while the other 
held back the portiere^ will ever resound in my ears : 

*' jfe suis toujours trés sensible s aiix poignées de 
main amicales, qui me viennent des étrangers ; mais 
ce n^est pas d^tm étranger que me vieni la voire ; 
cesi de V Italie de ma premiere patrie^ oh est né 
mon J)ère» Adieu i '* 



V. 

PARIS. 

No matter how much you may enjoy being in 
Paris, there comes a time when you weary of the 
city. 

After the fever of the first few days has passed, 
when you begin to become familiar with that tu- 
multuous life, you are disenchanted, as you would 
be in seeing the city very early in the morning, while 
it is still sleepy and dishevelled. How ugly Paris is 
at that hour! Those famous boulevards, so bright 
and gleaming but a short time since, are only great 
irregular streets lined with miserable houses, high and 
low, faded, tarnished and crowned on the summits 
with a horrible confusion of tall chimneys v/hich 
seem like the frame-work of unfinished buildings ; 
and everything being still closed and veiled, one 
only sees a gray and solitary space, in which, one 
no longer recognizes at the first glance, the most 

243 



244 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

noted places. Everything seems tarnished, worn 
out, and full of repentance and sadness, from which 
the few carriages that pass rapidly by, seem to be 
fleeing like sinners surprised by shame and the 
dawn after the last orgies of carnival. "• Are these 
the boulevards?" you say with a feeling of sadness, 
as you stand before this miserable spectacle. So 
thus after some months of Paris life, you exclaim : 
**This is then Paris?" 

Yet the first few months are delightful, especially 
so, from the changes which take place in us. One 
experiences a redoubling of physical activity from the 
effect of the increase in the value of time, and the 
watch, until then despised, assumes the direction 
and guidance of our daily life. Then, days after 
our arrival, without our being aware of the fact, 
our usual gait is quickened and the range of our 
thoughts is enlarged. Everything, even amusement, 
demands forethought and care. Every step has 
its aim, every day presents itself from the time we 
wake, divided into a series of occupations ; so that 
none of those little idle moments remain which, 
like the irregular rests in a military march, rather 
weaken than strengthen one. The most torpid 



PARIS. 245 

indolence is aroused and conquered. The sensual 
and intellectual life are so subtly intertwined, 
and entangle us for whole days in so fine a net 
of pleasure, that it is quite impossible to make 
our escape. A wild curiosity about thousands 
of things takes possession of us, and makes us 
run around from morning until night with ques- 
tions on our lips and our purses in hand like starv- 
ing people in search of food. The crime which 
creates a sensation, the king who is passing, the 
luminary that is extinguished, the glory Avhich rises, 
scientific solemnity, the new books, scandal and 
pictures, together with exclamations of surprise and 
the loud laughter of Paris, succeed each other so 
rapidly that there is not even time to turn around 
and glance at everything, and we are obliged to 
defend our liberty of thought if we desire to at- 
tend to any kind of work. Everything is dashing 
along, and the slightest repose produces an over- 
flow. We stay forty-eight hours in the house, and 
it is like remaining a month in an Italian city. Upon 
coming out we find a hundred new things in the 
usual places into which we had glanced, anc] a hun- 
dred in the conversation of our circle of friends, so 



246 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

we return home with a seine full of news and ideas 
stamped with a witty opinion, and divided into 
change which we can spend immediately. 

At the end of a few days, we find ourselves in the 
condition of every good Parisian citizen ; that is, 
we make an exchange of our information or wit 
for all the learning and wit which surround us, so 
thoroughly do we feel in that dizzy and whirling 
multitude all the heat and palpitation of the life of 
all around us. 

No matter how quietly one may live, the great 
city is whispering in our ears continually, heating 
our faces with its breath, obliging us little by 
little to think and live in its way, and arousing 
every passion. 

After fifteen days there, the most restless stranger 
is as quiet as a cat under the stroking of its per- 
fumed hand. One feels a voluptuous irritation, (like 
the fumes of a deceitful wine rising little by little to 
the head) which is produced by the hurry of that 
life, its splendor, odors, its aphrodisiacal kitchen, 
exciting spectacles, and by the sharp way in which 
every idea strikes us ; and not a month has passed 
before that everlasting song, *' Pretty women, thea- 



PARIS. 247 

tres and suppers," tyrannically fills our heads, and all 
our thoughts centre therein. We have before us an 
ideal of life quite different from that we had when 
we arrived, easier for the time and harder for the 
purse, and with which our consciences have already 
had many little cowardly transactions before we 
are aware of it. Certainly this is no place for any 
great sorrow, because it is terrible for one bowed 
down with grief, to feel that immense crowd hurry- 
ing on to pleasure, passing over him. 

But Paris is for youth, health and fortune, giv- 
ing to these what no other city can ever bestow. 
Certain conditions of mind, brief but delicious, 
are peculiar to that life, like the passing in a 
carriage through one of those superb and noisy 
streets toward evening, under a beautiful blue sky 
freshened by a spring-time thunder storm, think- 
ing that after the drive, a superb banquet crowned 
with white shoulders and full of excitement is 
awaiting us. After the banquet a new comedy of 
Augier, then an hour in a circle of cultivated and 
congenial friends at the Cafe Tortoni ; and finally 
in bed, a chapter from Flaubert's new novel, be- 
tween every line of which we think of the excur- 



« 



248 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

sion to be made the following morning to St. Cloud. 
In no other city are given hours so full of pleas- 
urable sensations and expectations, not each hour, 
but each quarter, is laden with mysterious promises 
and riddles that keep the mind in the suspense of a 
hope for something unexpected which is the chief 
nourishment of life. We have a friend in Japan, 
from whom we have not heard in years. Let us 
station ourselves in front of the Grand Cafe, be- 
tween the hours of four and five, and it is not at all 
improbable that we may see him pass. There we 
have every thing at first hand. We are in the ad- 
vance guard, among the first of the great army of 
humanity, to see the face of the new idea, as it 
advances, and the heel of error that is fleeing away, 
the new direction of the road after its turn, and 
instantly our amour propre is engrafted with a kind 
of Parisian vain glory, of which we only rid our- 
selves at the station on leaving town, but which 
takes possession of even those who detest the city 
from the very day of their arrival. 

It is useless to attempt to escape from that 
whirlpool of ideas and conversations. Discussion 
awaits us at a hundred points, provoking us with 



PARIS. 249 

wit, ridicule, paradoxes and absurdities, obliging 
the most disagreeable man to become a soldier in 
that conflict. From the beginning one is outdone, 
and no matter how clever one may be, it is impossi- 
ble to find a word to say. At the dinners, particu- 
lary toward the end, w^hen all faces are flushed, one 
does not dare hurl his own rocket in the midst of 
those furious ones sent off in that loud and rapid 
conversation. The sarcastic smile of the beautiful 
woman, who seems to be using us (new to such cus- 
toms) for her experiments in aiiima vili, and the 
nonchalance of the young man with such artistically 
arranged hair, who is a trifle malicious, and always 
ready with his bow stretched, to shoot the ridicu- 
lous on the wing, upset our nerves, and despite sev- 
eral gray hairs, make us blush. But then from the 
casket of liqueurs a jet of the silvery eloquence of the 
guests bursts out for us, and a small triumph won 
there in that terrible arena seems to us the first real 
victory of our lives. Every day we seem to acquire 
something. The tongue loosens, and also in speak- 
ing the language itself, we succeed more and more 
easily in finding in this language, w^hich is always a 
trial of dexterity, the shortest and most lucid ex- 



250 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

pressions of our thoughts ; the wit is sharpened, 
whetted as it always is, by the coming in contact 
with the blade of a rival, the sense of the ridiculous 
continually exercised becomes refined, and little by 
little the gaily courageous philosophy of the boule- 
vardieTj (for whom the world begins at the Porte St. 
Martin and ends at the Madeleine) attaches itself to 
us with the Parisian smile. 

But the little load of cares and regrets which we 
brought from home were swept away as soon as we 
arrived by the first wave of that enormous sea, and 
we no longer see it save as a black speck in the dis- 
tance. Meanwhile, the circle of friends grows rap- 
idly larger, and we contract new habits ; all our 
foibles and weaknesses find soft spots in Avhich to 
take their ease. The terror which the grandeur of 
Paris caused us is succeeded by the joy of that lib- 
erty which arises from it ; the tumult that deafened 
us at first ends by soothing the ear, like the noise 
of an enormous waterfall ; that immense, fictitious 
magnificence fascinates us at last like the cleverly 
tinselled poetry of an ingenious disciple of the six- 
teenth century ; our step resounds on the sidewalks 
of the boulevards, as Zola says : Avec dcs famù 



PARIS. 251 

liarités particulih'es. Our minds become accus- 
tomed to puns, the palate to sauces, the eye to 
painted faces, and the ears to songs sung in 
the falsetto ; little by little, a deep and deli- 
cious depravity of taste takes possession of us, 
until one fine day we discover that we are thor- 
ough Parisians. 

Ah ! then, during the first portion of that honey- 
moon everything is pardonable. Corruption ! That 
makes us laugh. All the most dissolute people 
of the world gather there, famishing for vice, 
outraging every sense of decency and decorum, 
and angry because they cannot do worse, and Avho, 
when they have emptied their purses and exhausted 
themselves, return home crj^ing : What a dissolute 
place ! Ah, it is well for the other large cities 
of Europe to cry out against the scandal, the 
hypocrisy, and then against the levity ! This is 
true; but the grave thoughts of other nations re- 
mind us of the German poet ridiculed by Heine ; 
whose bachelor thoughts make their own coffee, 
shave themselves, and go to gather flowers on 
their own birthday in the garden of Brandeburg. 
Then the blague ! What if this has fastened itself 



253 STUDIES OF PARIS.^ 

Upon us strangers during our month's sojourn there, 
and we carry away a little of it for our own con- 
sumption when we return to our modest little coun- 
tries ! But we have something else to do than de- 
fend Paris while we are tossed about in her arms. 
Time flies. We do not wish to lose an hour of it. 
We have a thousand things to investigate, study and 
enjoy. We are seized by the mania to put into 
every day, like the thief into the sack, all the riches 
we can imagine ; an implacable demon chases us by 
blows of his whip from salon to salon, the theatre 
to the academy, the illustrious man to the bouquin- 
iste, the cafe to the museum, the ballroom to the 
newspaper office ; and in the evening, Avhen the 
great city, always amiable and gay, has told and 
given us all that we asked ; when we sit at supper with 
our friends, weary, but content at feeling our booty 
safely deposited in heart and head, we commence 
our jokes and anecdotes, and the first glass of cham- 
pagne gilds all the recollections of the day ; then, 
with an outburst of enthusiasm, we greet the great 
Paris, loving and magnificent hostess, who opens her 
arms to all, gives a profusion of kisses, gold and 
ideas, and rekindles in all hearts with its breath 



PARIS. 253 

of youth the fervor of glory and the love of life. 
But after a few short months, what a change takes 
place ! A bitter dislike for the most trifling thing 
begins to grow in your heart ; then a new one 
springs up every day, and at the end of a month 
you would like to escape from Paris, giving her the 
famous salute of Montesquieu to Genoa : 

" Adieu * * * sejour detestable ; 
II n'y pas de plaisir comparable 
A celui de te quitter." 

It is really a strange revulsion of ideas, but it hap- 
pens to nearly all, I fancy. Some fine day you are 
disgusted with an insipid joke which has been made 
over a hundred times in the paper you read every 
day. The following morning your nerves are jarred 
by that coagulated smile of your landlady, which 
resembles all the smiles you see everywhere in Paris 
when you go to pay a bill, and in the street you ob- 
serve that the uniform of the gensdarmes has be- 
come intolerable to you. Then, little by little, you 
grow enraged at the employe with glasses and mous- 
tache, who asks your name, country and profession 
in order to sell you a ticket for the Theatre Fran- 
cais ; at the stupid self-conceit of the concierges^ the 



:54 



STUDIES OF PARIS. 



impertinence of those ridiculous waiters in white 
skirts, the brutality of the cabmen, and the self-im- 
portance assumed by tout ce qui est un peu fonc- 
tiomiaire. Those ten paid rascals, who, every even- 
ing at all the theatres, wish to make you applaud 
that same couplet — those eternal romances sung 
with the voices of hens plucked alive, which you are 
called upon to enjoy at all the houses. 

Then you are surfeited with those dinners of 
numbered and classified mouthfuls, all that display 
of prices, in centimes, that indescribable, niggardly 
and pedantic something of a college boarding- 
school, disguised by the gorgeousness of a booth 
at a fair ; that everlasting sacrifice of everything 
to appearance, that polished and pretentious ele- 
gance, that perpetual smell of a wine-merchant 
and cosmetics, those superb houses, winding stair- 
cases, boxes of shops, hencoops of theatres, that 
reclame of mountebanks, that bazaar-like grandeur, 
that wretched fountain, consumptive-looking tree, 
black wall and muddy asphalt ; and scarcely outside 
of the heart of the city, those immense and uniform 
suburbs, those interminable spaces which are neither 
city nor country, scattered with great, sad and 



PARIS. 255 

solitary houses ; those small orphan-asylum looking 
gardens and those theatrical-looking villages. Is 
this the great Paris? If an earthquake should over- 
turn all the show-windows and a heavy rain wash 
out all the gilding, what would remain ? 

Where is the richness of Genoa, the beauty of 
Florence, the grace of Venice and the majesty of 
Rome ? Are you really pleased with that vainglori- 
ous parody of St. Peter's, the Pantheon^ that 
Greek-Roman temple, the Bourse^ or that enormous 
and superb cavalry barracks, the Tuileries, and the 
opera comique like appearance of the Place de la 
Concorde, the facades of the little rococo theatres, 
the towers in the shape of gigantic clarions and the 
cupolas built on the model of a jockey cap ? This 
is the city which resembles Athens, Rome, Tyre, 
Nineveh and Babylon ? Say rather Sodom and Go- 
morra. You do not so describe it on account of the 
greatness of its corruption, but for its insolence. 

At your home, at least, as some French women 
say to you, elles se conduisent bien. But where 
does one see out of Paris a double row of question- 
able houses with the beauties exposed upon the 
sidewalks, and a thousand restaurants where the 



256 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

mots crus are flung from one part of the room to the 
other, or they play at fencing with the feet under 
the table, with the friend of the heart, in perilous 
thrusts ? 

And what a variety ! Go to the Folies Bergere, 
You seem to hear little machines laughing ; it is 
as if they had all taken a course of coquetry 
from the same teacher; they do not move a muscle 
without some aim in view ; they regulate the art 
of seduction by the thermometer, in order not to 
spoil it, and they make it rise degree by degree, 
having a regular tariff for every degree. The beauty 
is all in closed carriages or inaccessible salons, in 
the light of the sun are only those dried up speci- 
mens of " gasping and half-living frailty," or large 
women, immovable behind the counters, like great 
cats — those enormous antigeometrical faces, which 
do not say an earthly thing. And the masculine 
sex, too ! That' hive oi goimneux, monsters of men, 
dressed like tailors' blocks, from which emerge the 
edge of the handkerchief and the tip end of the 
little purse, little glove and little walking stick ; en- 
vironnes, as Dumas says, d'ime legere atmosphere de 
perruquier, without shoulders, chest, head or blood, 



PARIS. ^57 

who seem made on purpose to have their hats kick- 
ed off by the dancing girls of the Valentino. 

And that rabble of young and old men belonging 
to all classes of society ! Three hundred " citizens " 
hang over the side of a bridge to see a dog washed ; 
if a drum passes a crowd collects ; and a thousand 
people, in one railway station, make a tremendous 
uproar by clapping their hands, shouting and laugh- 
ing because one of the guards of the train has lost 
his hat. Take care that you do not cough here, be- 
cause if you do so, the whole thousand may begin 
to cough for three-quarters of an hour. What demo- 
crats ! Yes, these they are ; democrats in blood, 
great scoffers at every kind of vanity, like Monsieur 
Poirier. Your intimate friend will put a fresh rib- 
bon on his eyeglasses because he is to dine quietly 
with you at home ; the rich linen draper announces 
to you, with a radiant face, (as if it were a triumph 
for his house), the fact that a sous-préfet dégommé is 
coming to dinner ; the sergents de ville take certain 
liberties with the crowd, the half of which (with us) 
would be sufficient to excite a riot ; and the sov- 
ereign people, at public fetes, are stopped at every 
passage by sentinels and barricades, crushed and 



258 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

treated with such brutality that even the aristocratic 
Figaro^ the paper which combines with so much 
grace the description of a Holy Communion and 
the anecdote of the fille aux Cheveiix Carotte, feels 
obliged to raise a cry of indignation. Where could 
one ever find a literature more thoroughly fascinated 
by decorations, writers whose mouths water so In- 
genuously at the sound of a title, and who put more 
coats of arms or more aristocratic haughtiness into 
their works ? When will these obstinate drawing- 
room hangers-on free us from their everlasting vis- 
counts and marquises ? Have they not yet served 
up a sufficient number of those leading characters 
of theirs, so noble, young, handsome, witty, coura- 
geous, and irresistible, who possess all the gifts that 
the Lord can bestow, even to une jolie voix de te'nor ? 
Then those men so greedy for decorations. Great 
Heavens ! That poor Paul de Kock, who at seventy- 
four, writes twenty pages to prove that he cares 
nothing about not having received the Legion of 
Honor, when he is almost ready to cry over his dis- 
appointment? And where is there another demo- 
cratic country in which the writers heap such insult- 
ing ridicule upon entire classes of society, where the 



PARIS, 259 

epithet bourgeois has assumed in the minds of all 
those to whom it appertains a more aristocratically- 
disdainful significance, and where one single name 
bearing the plebian stamp, is sufficient to make a 
whole parquet shriek with laughter ? What is this 
curious mixture of contradictions, the Parisian? Who 
can tell ? Seize him and he slips out of your hands; 
ask him one of those leading questions in which a 
man's character is generally revealed, and he will 
parry it with all the skill of a magician. They are 
witty; this has been sung in every key, but only up 
to a certain point. They have a large collection of 
propositions, and of cunning and very elastic phrases 
with which they extricate themselves from any diffi- 
cult situation, always trimming their words in keep- 
ing with a certain kind of wit more profound, but 
less clever. There are many Parisians, certainly, who 
are very witty, but these do the work for all the 
others. Their superiority lies in the fact that the 
majority of the population is an excellent conductor 
of this species of intellectual electricity, by which the 
bon-mot uttered in the morning by one person, and 
gohig the rounds with marvellous rapidity, becomes 
the property of thousands in the evening, and every 



200 STUDIES OF PARIS, 

one is enriched by all this circulating wealth of wit. 
Yet whether the gamin of Paris be so much more 
clever than the vallione of Naples, or the becerino 
of Florence is quite a question. What a study they 
make of jt. They prepare themselves for dinner, go 
to entertainments with their repertoire well selected 
and arranged, and conduct the conversation in zig- 
zags, jumps, turns, and leaps with remarkable tact, 
in order to utter some trifle at a certain time. There 
is a great resemblance between these second-hand 
wits; if you hear one Commis Voyageur, you have 
heard a thousand. There are certain ingredients 
and a certain mechanism for the distillation of that 
wit, which, once discovered, is ruined, like the re- 
serve thrusts of a fencer. Still they cling to it ! It 
really excites one's pity and disdain to see the in- 
firm old man affected by incipient delirium tremens, 
who, when he has succeeded in the crowd in making 
a play upon words, at which five idiots smile, raises 
his forehead gleaming with joy and glory, and moves 
off in a perfect state of bliss for a week ! Then this 
universal mania de faire de V esprit, which narrows 
one's mind, makes one say so many stupid things, 
and so often sacrifices common sense, dignity and 



PARIS. 261 

friendship to a success of five minutes, is like a veil 
continually waved before the mind which perturbs 
the sight of the souls. Can you ever tell what a 
man is concealing behind that everlasting joke? 
But there are many other intangible barriers be- 
tween the Parisian and yourself. The Parisian be- 
longing to good society seems to be a frank sort of 
man, but is not really one. It is seldom that you 
can enjoy the pleasure of an easy and familiar con- 
versation with him. Preoccupied, as he alv/ays is, 
by the thought of being the object of curiosity and 
study for strangers, he is on his guard, regulates his 
gestures and smile, studies the inflections of his 
voice, tries continually to justify the admiration 
which he presupposes that you have for him, and 
has always a little of that coquetry of women and the 
vanity of an artist. Every moment you are seized 
with the desire to say to him, ''Let us remove our 
gloves for once." His nature corresponds with his 
style of dress, which, even when it is simple, has 
some trifle about it that betrays the effeminate ef- 
forts of a dandy. He is affable, without doubt, but 
it is a kind of affability which keeps you at a certain 
distance, like the light hand of a girl who does not 



202 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

wish to be touched. As for the Spaniard, he makes 
you feel his superiority with such an amount of os- 
tentation that you are completely overwhelmed. 
But the Parisian humiliates you so delicately, by pin 
pricks, with the perpetual and pointed smile of one 
who is tasting sauce piquant e ^ putting to you listless 
questions, slightly tinged with a benevolent curiosity 
about your affairs. Oh, poor Italians, how your 
amour propre is crushed at Paris ! If you do not 
name Dante, Michel Angelo and Raphael, you will 
not elicit anything but a Qit 'est ce que cest que ca ? 
for any of the other writers whom you may mention. 
The papal deputy asks you if Civitavecchia still ad- 
heres to the Pope. The excellent pater fami- 
lias sees brigands with their guns slung over the 
shoulders quietly smoking before the Cafe' d' Europe 
at Naples. The gentleman has doubtless been in 
Italy, but only in order to talk of Italy with some 
beautiful woman in the recess of the window after 
dinner ; or to append that bauble Italy to the chain 
of his knowledge, in order to play with it in idle 
moments, with the usual phrases every Frenchman 
possesses, about landscapes, pictures and hotels. 
The famous l)e Forcade said of Mazoni at table : 



PARIS, 263 

" // a du talent y They are almost ready to ask you in 
fact. " Can any one be born in Italy? " This idea 
of having been born at Paris, of having had this sign 
of predilection from God, is the leading thought of 
the Parisian, like a star, which irradiates his whole 
life with a heavenly consolation. The benevolence 
he shows to all strangers is inspired to a great de- 
gree, by a feeling of commiseration for them, and 
his dislikes of them is not a profound one, simply 
from the fact that he considers his enemies suffici- 
ently punished by the fate which caused them to be 
born where they were. For this reason he worships 
all the childishness and vices of his native city, and 
is proud of them, only because they belong to Paris, 
which, to his mind, is above all human criticism. 
Can one find any capital city which is more insolent 
to the people from the provinces, represented by its 
writers as a mass of cretins ? and authors who offer 
incense to their city with a more outrageous impu 
dence, not only to any other national amoiir propre, 
but to all human dignity? They will tell you to 
your face, from the stage, that the smoke from its 
chimneys are the ideas of the universe ! All lie 
prostrate on the ground before this enormous cour- 



264 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

tezan, mother and nurse of all vanities; of that 
rabid vanity of pleasing her first among them all, of 
obtaining from her, at any cost, at least one single 
glance ; of that disgusting vanity which induces a 
writer to declare himself, in the preface of an infam- 
ous novel, capable of all the baseness and all the 
crimes of Heliogabalus and Nero. Take then, jok- 
ing aside, their prefaces full of grimaces, puerilities, 
boasts and impostures. Vanity is stamped upon 
them all. There is not in all contemporary litera- 
ture one of those grand, modest, benevolent and 
logical characters which write with the splendors of 
the mind, the dignity of life ; one of those lofty and 
pure figures, before which one uncovers his head 
without hesitation and reserve, and whose name is a 
title of nobility and a comfort to humanity. All is 
overpowered and spoiled by the mania iox pose ; 
pose in literature, pose in religion, pose in love, pose 
even in the greatest afflictions. An immense and 
diseased sensuality constitutes the foundation of that 
life, and is revealed in letters, music, architecture, 
fashions in the sound of the voice, glances and even 
in the gait. Amusement ! All the rest is only a 
means of attaining this end. From one limit to the 



PARIS. 265 

Other of those superb boulevards resounds a loud 
laugh of derision for all the scruples and all the 
modesty of the human soul. And a day arrives at 
last, in which you become indignant at that life ; a 
day in which you find yourself fearfully weary of 
that theatre, impregnated with the odor of gas and 
patchoule, where every spectacle ends in a canzo- 
nette ; in which you are satiated with puns, blague, 
dances, dyes, reclame^ cracked voices, false smiles, 
and purchased pleasures ; then you despise that 
shameless city, and it seems to you that in order to 
purify yourself after three months of that life, you 
ought to live for a year on the summit of a moun- 
tain, and you feel an irresistible desire to run through 
green fields in the open air, to smell the odor of the 
ground and to refresh your soul and blood in soli- 
tude, face to face with nature. 

The fit of passion is over, that is well. " Let us 
stand aside so that it may pass," as the Spanish say. 
At Paris you can say whatever you choose ; she 
takes no more notice of us than do the elephants in 
the zoological gardens of the children whom they 
carry upon their backs on holidays. But these are 
not our last impressions of Paris. 



266 STUDIES OF PARIS, 

The period in which everything looks rose-color 
and that in which everything seems black, is fol- 
lowed by a third that is a return in the direction of 
the first ; that period, in which one commences to 
live peacefully in a circle of choice and well tried 
friends. And one must confess it ; the friend found 
there, the good, honest Frenchman is really worth 
two. In no other European do you find a more 
amiable harmony of mind, heart and manner. Be- 
tween the friendship, more expansive than profound, 
of the Southern Europeans, and that deep, but re- 
served one of the North, you prefer this, so warm 
and cold at a time and so full of solemnity and deli- 
cacy. How charming it is, when one is weary of the 
noise of the great city, to go in the evening to the 
other bank of the Seine, into a silent street, to visit 
the quiet, little family, which lives, as it were, on an 
island in the middle of that turbulent ocean. What 
a warm welcome you receive, what unreserved gayety 
you find at that refined but modest table, and how 
thoroughly your mind rests there. Paris itself offers 
you many retreats from its dangers and a thousand 
remedies for its fevers. After an exciting night, with 
what inexpressible pleasure do you dash through its 



PARIS. 267 

beautiful groves, and the gay suburbs of the Seine, 
where you find the gayety of a country festival, and 
into its vast gardens in the midst of an enormous hive 
of children, or through one of its immense and soli- 
tary avenues, in which the heart and mind expand, 
and the sad image of the Babylon on the boulevards 
seems to you so far away. Everywhere you find a 
people who reveal more defects the more you study 
them ; but in whom every defect is counterbalanced 
by some admirable quality. 

They are a frivolous people, but one in whom 
a noble and resolute word always finds an echo. 
There is always an open and safe road by which 
to arrive at their hearts. There is no elevated 
sentiment or beautiful idea which does not take 
root in their souls. Their quick intelligence makes 
all the communications of the mind both easy 
and agreeable. The chance word, shading, half- 
uttered suggestion, that which is taken for granted, 
the accent, and the hint are seized on the wing. A 
thousand people re-united have but one soul with 
which to feel and comprehend. It is impossible not 
to be attracted by those fetes, tumultous gatherings, 
in which enjoyment makes all states and conditions 



268 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

equal, and an innumerable crowd is nothing but one 
immense assembly of happy thoughtless friends. 
Their most obstinate enemy must burst out into a 
hearty laugh and open his heart to all this benevo- 
lence. Because underneath all the childishness of 
the Parisian, there lies as surely a fund of goodness, 
as under a splendid froth, an excellent wine. He 
is naturally unreserved, his manners do not reveal 
this fact ; not diffident, easier to be deceived than 
to deceive ; inclined to forgive injuries, conciliating, 
scornful of trivial rancor and all the petty niggard- 
liness of life. He is constantly, by nature, in a state 
of mind in which one finds every one after a gay ban- 
quet where wine flows freely ; equally ready to com- 
mit some great folly or do something grand, to 
embrace a sworn enemy, to provoke his neighbors 
by a word, to play a buffoon trick standing on the 
table, or to take pity on some little beggar who is 
asking for bread at the door. When he gets beyond 
the little circle of his ordinary existance, the spec- 
tacle of that immense life of Paris exalts all his fac- 
ulties and all his good and bad feelings. We too 
are similarly affected. The aggrandizement in the 
proportions of everything gives us little by little an- 



PARIS, 269 

other idea of the things themselves. Even the cor- 
ruption — enormous and enticing as it is, ends by 
fascinating us like a vast and varied field of study, 
rather than repelling us by its ugliness ; and we ac- 
custom ourselves to it almost as if it were a needful 
feature of life, or a grand and terrible school, con- 
taining a great number of experiences and ideas and 
set in motion by the springs of a thousand powerful 
minds. 

In the Bullier hall, amid that whirlpool of three 
hundred girls dancing together and singing in a 
perruque-blonde voice, instead of an outcry against 
corruption, there springs from our hearts an in- 
spiring hymn to Truth and Life. Disgusted with 
the countries where not even vice and its lan- 
guage are original, Ave find here at least, the 
absence of that lowest and vilest form of corrup- 
tion, which is the mania for feigning it out of 
vain-glory, when one has neither the strength or 
means of enjoying it in its tremendous fulness. 
Little by little, we persuade ourselves that many of 
the diseases which we believed to be caused by 
guilt, are only here the efflorescence of a too rich 
blood, while it is the lack of vitality which makes 



2/0 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

other nations flaunt certain negative virtues in the 
face of Paris, to whom one might say, as the Messa- 
lina of Cossa did to Silio, " You are so corrupt that 
you do not support the greatness of Vice." Thus 
in all the different phases of life, you find there, 
(with a feeling of mingled regret for yourself and 
admiration of Paris), the original of a thousand 
things, of which at home you have seen the counter- 
feit reduced to pocket form for a more diminutive 
people. 

There you feel disposed to lay much to pride, when 
you observe things at no great distance, and can put 
yourself in the place of a people who see themselves 
imitated by the universe ; who see gathered and 
carried all about the crumbs from their table, re- 
nowned works made from the cuttings of their own ; 
busts raised at certain times and in certain places to 
people who have no other merit than that of being 
subscribers to the Revue des deux Mondes ; their 
language purloined and mixed with many foreign 
ones, their novels and theatres stolen, all the hear- 
says of their history and chronicles treasured up ; 
the whole city known like the palm of one's hand. 
Tortoni more famous than m_any an immortal 



PARIS, 271 

monument; the Maison Dorée, the first of all the 
dreams of the dissolute of the whole world ; their 
fashions copied, their laughs repeated, their jokes re- 
hearsed, their caprices adored ; and one can also un- 
derstand how angry they grow when one of their 
most pedantic scholars insults them. Why should 
one be astonished that people think only of them- 
selves in a country so ardently admired, by deed if 
not by word ? But this defect is not injurious to 
them or to others, since it arises from a profound 
knowledge of her own affairs, from regarding them 
with an excess of affection, and from the belief that 
the entire world regards them with the same esteem, 
that warm, high colored, original and vital some- 
thing, which they exhibit in all the manifestations 
of themselves. They have a smaller field to traverse, 
as Schiller said of himself to Goethe ; but traverse 
it in less time in all its parts. For this reason there 
is an unending continuation and combination of di- 
rect ideas and thoughts toward the same point, a 
great frequency of attrition which emits light and 
heat ; every inch of space is disputed by a thou- 
sand contestants; instead of walking they all run, 
instead of controversy there is the fray. And in this' 



272 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

perpetual conflict, all superfluous baggage is thrown 
aside, everthing is made a weapon of offense or de- 
fense, thought stripped of its leaves, language re- 
stricted and action hastened ; art and life equally 
bold and rapid, and all encouraged by the great gay 
voice of the great city, which speaks in shrill, crystal- 
line tones, heard throughout the world. 

The more you become absorbed in the study of that 
life, the more astonished you are in seeing the im- 
mense amount of work accomplished under that ap- 
pearance of universal dissipation. How many work- 
men labor in solitude : how many prepare, with in- 
credible fatigue, in obscurity — for public combats ; 
how not only every kind of genius, but any particu- 
lar faculty scarcely more than mediocre, finds this 
the way in which to exercise itself to its own, and 
to general advantage ; how quickly and sponta- 
neously a circle of amicable and cultured minds 
(who aid in rising and becoming known) gather 
around every genius ; how the slightest promise of 
success in the field of intellect awakens in all classes 
a pleasant feeling of curiosity and respect, eliciting 
from all that anticipatory tribute of glory which 
goes so far toward making it a reality ; what an ex- 



PARIS. 273 

traordinary impulse to human strength is the cer- 
tainty of the sudden and broad change of fortune 
which a great success produces there ; how grand 
and intoxicating in that city is the triumph of genius, 
which, scarcely noticed by her, receives the saluta- 
tions of unknown admirers and offers and counsels 
from every part of the globe ; how to the man un- 
successful in one direction, a hundred other roads re- 
main open, if he be willing to lower to a very slight 
degree his pretension to glory ; how the forgetful 
nature of that great city, which, not permitting any- 
one to rest upon one triumph, obliges all to repre- 
sent themselves continually at the contest, produces 
that marvellously busy life, those obstinately war- 
like old men, whose example inspires coming genera- 
tions with the passion for work ; and in fine, what an 
enormous quantity of unfinished work, of attempts, 
sketches, of material spoiled by some, but not use- 
less to others, and of praiseworthy creations in all 
fields, but condemned to die where they arise, be- 
cause they are crushed by the abundance of some- 
thing better. 

When one has observed all this, the sojourn in 
Paris becomes agreeable and useful, if only in 



2/4 STUDIES OF PARIS. 

watching the workings of that immense machine, 
as she poHshes, perfects, transforms, squeezes out, 
and grinds the inexhaustible material of genius, 
wealth, youth, ambition and courage, which France 
and the world continually throw under her formid- 
able wheels, and how she casts from the opposite 
side great names, frustrated celebrities, masterpieces, 
immortal words, broken bones, weapons, gems, and 
fragments, which France and the world hasten to 
gather and comment upon. Censure this Colossus? 
Cry out against her workmen because they drink 
absinthe, sing falsetto, and have a woman awaiting 
them at the door? What pedantry ! 

But even this is not the last impression which one 
receives of Paris. In remaining there for some 
time, one passes through another set of enthusiasms 
and disillusions. Many an evening do you return 
home, between those interminable rows of lights, 
melancholy and Aveary unto death of everything, 
with a raging love for your country in your heart. 
Then you become reconciled with the city on a 
beautiful autumn day, in witnessing one of those 
noisy expansions of joy which calm the darkened 
soul. At another time a little humiliation, a stupid 



PARIS. 275 

play of words repeated by a million mouths, a scene 
of nauseating obscenity, a dark and gloomy sky 
change the aspect of everything, and such violent 
antipathies and dislikes arise within you, that you 
would like to see that city disappear like an encamp- 
ment carried off by a hurricane. But you v/ill be 
ashamed of that feeling some other day, in thinking 
of the immensity of the vacuum in your mind if all 
that the city has placed there from the time of your 
infancy to the present day, should suddenly leave it. 
Up to the last moment Paris will cause you many 
annoyances and give you many caresses, like a beau- 
tiful but nervous woman, and you will experience 
all the heights and depths of a passion — to-day at 
her feet in humility, to-morrow, seized by a desire 
to bite and insult her, and then again to ask her par- 
don, so fascinated are you. Yet every day you will 
find the ties that bind you to her growing stronger. 
And this you feel more than ever on going away ; 
the evening you pass rapidly for the last time 
through that immense splendor of boulevards, which 
is suddenly succeeded by the half darkness of an en- 
ormous and gloomy station. Then, despite of the 
desire you have to see your home, you are seized by 



'2/6 STUDIES- OF PARIS. 

a feeling of sadness at the thought of returning into 
that dormitory of a city from which you started, 
and you listen for the last time to the distant noise 
of Paris with an inexplicable feeling of desire and 
envy. And from the end of the coupé in the dark- 
ness, you see the city once more, as you saw it one 
beautiful July morning from a tower of Notre 
Dmne ; traversed by the enormous blue arch of the 
Seine, with its distant violet-hued horizons, im- 
mense and smoky, at the moment, when from a 
square lying beneath, the drums of a regiment sent 
up to you an echo of the battle of Magenta. " Oh, 
beautiful and tremendous sinner," you then ex- 
claim, *' I absolve thee, and at the risk of the 
damnation of my soul, I love thee ! " 



'Cool and Refreshing Reading for the Summer Season. 

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G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK 



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(fms^ 



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